


The Leap In Job

by Ultra



Category: Leverage, Quantum Leap
Genre: Confusion, Drama, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Future, Gen, Heist, Holography, Love Triangles, Misunderstandings, Neural Handshake, Parker Being Parker, Relationship Problems, Romance, Running Away, Surprise Ending, Talking, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Trouble, Trust, Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7811974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dr Sam Beckett makes his latest leap into infamous Robin Hood style thief Nathan Ford, he never could imagine how complicated things were about to get. Thankfully, he has Al to help him out, as always, but this isn't going to be a simple job. If Nate is such a Mastermind, why would Sam be needed for a heist? Maybe that's not what he's here for. When Parker runs away, it seems it might be more of an emotional problem that Sam is here to fix, in place of Nate who wouldn't know where to begin. Potential love triangles, complex cons, and a grifter with a crush on him? Even Sam Beckett wasn't quite ready for this leap!</p><p>Timeline: post Season 3 Leverage/AU post-series Quantum Leap</p><p>(Originally written for the crossbigbang in 2012)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t often that things went wrong for the Leverage team, at least not so very wrong that they couldn’t be fixed and mostly on the fly. Today was one of those rare occasions when the job just couldn’t be saved by switching to Plans B through M, and the gang had been forced to pull out and return to base to rethink their strategy before making a second attempt.

Things had gone almost too smooth to last, and they ought to have known it. Hardison had pulled his usual awesome hacking tricks to get their names on the list. Sophie had sailed into that party like the woman of substance she posed as, and grifted her way into the heart of the mark, whilst Eliot had watched Parker’s back as she broke into the safe upstairs to get the rest of the evidence they needed. Nate had overseen it all from the van, sure they were going to get away clean, until the last moment.

It all happened so fast, there was hardly time to react. A face from Sophie’s past called her by a different name, almost at the very same moment Eliot and Parker were discovered. Accusations flew in one scene, fists in another, as Nate and Hardison watched the camera feeds from the van outside. They were all lucky to get away without the cops showing up or someone getting seriously hurt. As it was the job was left undone, and half their faces were known to those they needed to foil. This whole gig had gone way south, and it needed fixing fast. That was why the team were assembled at the apartment again now, trying to decide how to make the best out of this disaster.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” asked Eliot, as he sat down on the stool, pressing an ice-pack tight against his injured shoulder. “Nate?” he tried again when the Mastermind said nothing, just stood staring for a long moment with the oddest look on his face.

Nobody had seen the invisible shimmer of blue light as their friend and boss Nathan Ford had leapt out of his body, and Dr Sam Beckett had leapt in.

From inside of Nate’s body, Sam looked frantically around the room, then at four people sat at a counter all staring at him, waiting for him to say something apparently.

“Oh boy,” he muttered, wishing he had dropped into this situation just a little sooner so he had heard the question that had presumably been asked. “Um, I, er... I just have to... Sorry, what did you ask me?” he said with a shake of his head.

“I asked you what the plan was?” the guy with the long hair repeated. “You goin’ deaf, old man?” he teased his friend.

“Eliot!” the brunette woman admonished him, which at least gave Sam one name to work with, though his own might’ve been of more use!

“Um... no. No, not deaf yet,” he chuckled nervously, spinning around to look at the screen behind him and still not really understanding any more than before.

A computer display was spread across six large monitors on the wall, showing faces of people he didn’t recognise and what appeared to be charts and financial records. None of it made any sense, not a bit of it was familiar.

“Nate?” asked the black guy behind the counter. “You okay, man?”

Sam turned around to look at him when he realised that it must indeed be himself who was this Nate person. Not that he had a clue what to say when he did address the nameless young man who had spoken to him.

“Sure, I’m fine,” he lied. “I just... I need a drink,” he said as he spotted the kitchen and practically ran across the apartment to that area.

The others watched him go with varying expressions of confusion and worry.

“I thought he could handle the whole alcohol thing now?” Parker hissed.

“Apparently not,” replied Eliot, wincing some as his ice pack slipped. “Sophie, you know what’s goin’ on?” he checked with the grifter.

“Not a clue,” she told him in a whisper, shaking her head. “He was fine just a few minutes ago... but then he never did handle failure well, and tonight was hardly a success, now was it?”

Across the way, Sam was rifling through the kitchen cupboards, not even really sure what he was looking for. Mostly he was hoping Al would show up and fast to give him some clue as to who, where, and when he was! So far all he could see in these cabinets was tea, coffee, cereal, and junk food. Trying the fridge he found beers and copious amounts of orange soda. None of this was helping.

“Nate?” the brunette called from her place at the counter, getting up to come over to him, Sam realised, as he glanced over his shoulder.

Sure, it helped that he knew his name, but he didn’t know hers. These people could be family, friends, business colleagues, he hadn’t any way of knowing right now, and that made him awfully nervous.

“C’mon, Al!” he said in a harsh whisper, putting on a smile the moment Sophie arrived at his side.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asked him, putting a hand to his arm. “I know tonight got pretty screwed up, but that wasn’t your fault. You know that, don’t you?”

Sam nodded along, opening his mouth to say something but never actually getting that far as he spotted a reflection in the shiny surface of the toaster that could only be himself. This Nate person appeared to be about his age, dark hair with grey starting to show, and large tired eyes that proved it had been a rough day in his life. That certainly tied up with what this beautiful woman was saying to him now, and she really was beautiful. If only Sam knew what her name was, and how they were supposedly connected.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he repeated her words. “Then who’s was it?” he asked, hoping that might prompt her to recount a few things and lead him to know exactly what they’d all been doing that had gone so wrong.

“Sometimes things aren’t anybody’s fault, just rotten luck,” she shrugged easily, “but we can fix it, Nate. We trust you to know how to fix it,” she smiled.

Sam closed his eyes at that and wished the world away. Perfect. Not only did this group of people need a new plan for something that had clearly gone wrong, they were expecting good old Nate to come up with that plan, and Sam didn’t even know what the original plan had been that didn’t work!

“Hey, guys?” said a voice behind them then, and both turned to see Hardison hovering there. “We all was talkin’. We’re all pretty tired, and with Eliot being beat up and all...”

“Dammit, Hardison, I’m fine!” he protested, but his friend waved away his words.

“We all could use some rest before we start working on Take 2 of this plan, right?” he suggested. “’Sides, something’s up with my computer here, it’s havin’ some kinda reaction... I don’t even know,” he shook his head. “Point is, is everybody cool with us all taking a break, starting over in the morning?” he asked, looking from Nate and Sophie to Eliot and Parker, then back again.

Various words of approval were spoken, and before long the team were moving, leaving Sam alone in what he assumed must be his apartment. After all, nobody seemed to think it was strange he wasn’t shifting whilst they were all headed out, and somebody had to live in this place.

“You want a ride home, Sophie?” asked Eliot from the door, making Sam look up fast.

The blonde had already left so it must be the brunette that was Sophie.

“Thanks, Eliot. I’ll meet you down there,” she said with a pointed look.

Rolling his eyes, the man with the long hair left then, and Sophie strutted over to ‘Nate’ akin to a tiger prowling her prey, or so Sam thought. She was beautiful but he had a feeling just a little dangerous too.

“You get some rest, okay?” she told him. “Don’t stay up all night worrying about this con. We’ll figure it out, we always do,” she smiled, leaning in very close and planting a kiss on his cheek.

Sam wasn’t sure how to react and so only smiled back at her until she turned away and headed for the door. He barely noticed Al appear, until suddenly the observer wolf-whistled with appreciation at the view he was getting. As Sophie, and her shapely rear and legs disappeared from view, Al couldn’t help but want to follow right through the closed door, and did so until Sam called him back.

“Do you have to leer at every woman you see?” he asked, tapping his foot with frustration.

“Only the gorgeous ones,” his friend shrugged easily. “And Sam, she is something else. English too. Gotta love a girl with a accent”.

“Down boy!” Sam tried not to laugh as he encouraged the hologram to behave. “At least you’re here now, though I could’ve used your help a few minutes ago,” he sighed, wandering over to the couch and dropping down amongst the soft cushions.

“You seem to forget how hard it is to track you when you leap, Sam,” his friend reminded him. “Ziggy has to crunch a lot of numbers to find out when and where you are, then to drop me in, complete with information? It’s not exactly as simple as A, B, C”.

“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly a first grade spelling bee for me either,” countered Sam. “Dropping in here mid-conversation with four people I can’t identify, and me being a fifth person that I don’t know either,” he pointed out. “So far all I know for sure is my name is Nate, the woman who kissed me is Sophie, and I’m in some kind of team with an Eliot, a Hardison, and... and there was a blonde woman, younger than Sophie, I didn’t get her name”.

“Okay...” Al pushed a few buttons on his hand-link as he paced up and down the living room. “Well, I don’t know about the names of your little band of friends, but from what it says here, Nate is short for Nathan, as in Ford, and you are a... chief,” he frowned then and smacked the hand link one more time as it buzzed and clicked. “A thief! Sorry, you’re a thief,” he confirmed at last with a wide grin.

“A thief?” Sam’s eyes were wide as saucers as he leapt to his feet then. “I can’t be a criminal, Al,” he shook his head, before continuing to stare at the large screen on the wall.

The financial records and the pictures would make sense if he were a big time scam artist. Hadn’t Sophie said he shouldn’t worry to much about the con? That certainly tied in with the idea of him being a thief just as Al has said, but it didn’t make Sam like it any more than a moment before.

“You are not a criminal,” his friend confirmed. “Nathan Ford is, not you, and even he’s not so bad”.

“Not so bad?” Sam echoed, gesturing towards the screen. “I’m a scam artist ripping off a rich man with what I presume is my band of merry con-men, and I’m not so bad?” he questioned.

“Your rich man up here?” replied Al, waving an arm at the same picture Sam had been so focused on. “He deserves it” he confirmed. “All the cases this team took on were deserving,” he explained. “See, according to the data, Nathan Ford was an insurance man for a company named IYS, but they screwed him over”.

“Screwed him over how?” asked Sam curiously.

“Well, er...” Al punched the keys on his hand-link and then his face dropped as he read the news. “His son got sick... cancer,” he explained. “IYS wouldn’t pay the medical bills and the kid died. Nathan turned to drink, his wife left him, all very sad and messy,” he went on, as Sam sank back into the chair and thought about how tragic this man’s life had been, though he still couldn’t condone him turning to a life of crime.

“After that, this team was formed,” Al continued to explain. “Seems they went by Leverage Consulting when they formed in LA in 2008, moved to Boston the next year and continued their work”.

“What work?” asked Sam, rubbing a hand across his forehead as he felt it start to ache. “You said they were criminals?”

“No, I said they were thieves,” Al confirmed. “They do good now. Kind of like Robin Hood. They, er... they pick up where the law leaves off, help people who can’t help themselves, stick it to the man,” he said with a grin that couldn’t be helped.

Sam wasn’t sure what to make of all this. It wasn’t as if he’d never leapt into a person of questionable background before. He’d been in prison, on death row even, as well as played the other side as a victim of terrible crimes. He’d been a cop too, and he knew they weren’t always as good as they should be. There was room in the world for people like Nathan Ford, people to help others, to change the world for the better. After all, that was what Sam was here to do, to put right things that had gone wrong, that other ‘normal’ people would perhaps struggle to rectify.

“Al, what year is this?” he asked then, looking around the apartment and realising it had all the mod cons.

The people who had been here weren’t dressed like any old-fashioned era he recognised, black and white were together as equals, men and women too. This had to be pretty close to the present, perhaps the closest he’d ever been.

“Er, this would be August 17th 2009,” he confirmed. “Wow, that’s just a couple of years in the past from where I am in the present,” he considered, definitely the closest to his own real time and place than Sam had ever been before.

Of course there was no point pondering too long on the whys and wherefores of how Sam had come to be here. The important thing was to always concentrate on how to put right what had gone wrong and move on to the next task. Clearly Nathan Ford needed help with something, and Sam had a strange feeling he knew what it was.

“I’m here to fix this con that went wrong, right?” he asked Al, looking from the screen across the way to his friend and back.

“Um, well, actually, Ziggy isn’t so sure,” he admitted, “but yeah, we think so. Trouble is with this kind of thing, Sam, there ain’t a whole lot of records. These people tend to work... under the radar,” he said, complete with hand gesture to emphasise his point.

Sam nodded his understanding and then crossed to the opposite wall again and studied the information on the screen. He had a clicker in his hand that he found on the table and one push of the button brought up the next selection of numbers and data. He was a smart guy, he could figure this out, he was sure of it. The fact was he pretty much had to, or be stuck here forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Nathan Ford was not happy. He was not about to admit to being scared or confused, though in part he was both. Right now he was focusing purely on the ‘not happy’ because it was an emotion he understood and could play to his advantage.

One minute he was standing in front of his team, about to figure out what the hell went wrong with their latest con, and how they might fix it. Next thing he knew, he was here, standing alone in a strange blueish white room, and wearing, of all things, a spandex suit.

As drunk as Nate had gotten in the past, as far out of it as he’d been either through drinking or trying not to drink, he had never had a dream like this. All the times he’d been knocked unconscious, those few times he experimented with drugs in college, none of it caused a hallucination as real as this, and today had been a pretty normal day, all things considered.

“Hey there, Mr Ford,” said a cheery voice then, and Nate spun around fast to see a short, badly dressed, older man strolling in, with a lit cigar in his hand. “How’re you feeling?”

“How am I feeling?” asked Nate with a smile that was far from genuine. “That all depends on which of my theories is correct. I mean, after two hours pacing around this room, I’ve come to the following conclusions,” he explained. “Either I’m dead and this is purgatory; I’m unconscious and this is the most vivid coma-dream anybody ever had; or... y’know, I’ve finally gone completely crazy”.

Al nodded along with all the other guy was saying. He totally understood where he was coming from, this whole thing must seem pretty strange to those that didn’t understand what was happening to them. Still, Nathan Ford was much more calm than some people he had met here in the holding room after one of Sam’s leaps.

“Well, I can tell you that it’s none of the above,” said Al, puffing on his cigar. “In fact it’s a little less bad and little more confusing than all three, but I’m willing to take a shot at explaining if you’re willing to listen”.

Nate studied Al and honestly wasn’t sure what to make of him. He didn’t exactly look like a bad guy, but then looks could be deceiving and in his line of work, Nate knew that better than anyone. He doubted this person was God or the devil, and after all, he had just assured him that death was not what had caused all this, anymore than coma or insanity.

“Before you start, Mr...?” he prompted.

“Oh, you can just call me Al,” the observer smiled.

“Fine, Al,” Nate nodded once, re-taking his seat at the oddly shiny table and looking down a moment. “For starters, I... I...” he stopped when he realised that the reflection in the mirrored surface looked nothing like his own, a similar age and the same gender, yes, but not at all his own face.

“Don’t tell me,” Al smiled awkwardly. “You could use a drink, right?”

* * *

Al had managed to give Sam a reasonable amount of information about this Nate person he had leapt into, but there was little to go on where the team were concerned except names and basic roles in this gang. Sam had noted everything down and then gone through the apartment with a fine tooth comb, hoping to find more clues before the crew of thieves that he was going to have to lead returned in the morning.

It seemed he had every component of the perfect team for a heist, very like a movie he once saw, though for the life of him Sam could not recall the title. Each leap Swiss-cheesed his memory just enough to annoy him these days, but at least what he couldn’t recall now wasn’t vital to his task.

So far he had Hardison the computer hacker, Sophie the grifter, Eliot who was (for lack of a better term) a hitter, and Parker who was somewhat of an enigma. Other than being a thief like all the rest, details were extremely vague. Rifling through files and folders, all Sam could find were the particulars of past heists and cons that this team had pulled. They were smart, all of them, not least Nate himself who seemed to be the self-appointed Mastermind of the crew. That made Sam nervous. He was intelligent, he had qualifications, and he was a pretty fast thinker. The problem was, he was not a criminal mastermind, and he wasn’t so sure he could come up with the same elaborate and clever plans that Nathan Ford would in the circumstances.

Sam hoped that by going over past jobs, and pouring over the details of this latest case, he’d have come up with something, anything, by the time the team returned to the apartment to hear his plan. Hours had gone by, night had turned back into day, and honestly he was no much further forward than when he started!

What the leaper didn’t know was that the team he was supposed to lead were not so very far away from him. Eliot had arrived first and deliberately let himself into the bar to hang out there and wait for the others. Something was making the hitter uneasy and he didn’t like that one little bit. He was used to Nate being quirky sometimes, when he got a little lost in a bottle or the con came close to any of the touchier subjects for him - hospitals, kids, alcohol. Last night was different.

“Hey, man,” Hardison looked confused when he came in and found his friend helping himself to a second beer. “We not havin’ the meeting upstairs?” the hacker asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” Eliot shook his head, grabbing a soda from behind the bar too and tossing it over. “I think there’s something wrong with Nate,” he admitted.

“Seriously, man?” his friend’s eyes went wide at that. “What, the man not allowed to have one job go south occasionally? That’s harsh,” he declared as he popped the top of his bottle and took a swig.

“It’s not that,” said Parker as she appeared as if from nowhere between them, as was her freakish habit. “He’s different,” she declared definitely. “Weird different” she added, as if that aided her explanation.

“We got that far, Parker,” Eliot rolled his eyes at her, taking a long drag on his beer.

She gave him a look, not because of what he said but more because he hadn’t offered to get her a drink. He soon realised that and though he rolled his eyes and sighed as if it were a big deal, he got her the usual too.

“So, he’s different, and weird,” Hardison summed up. “We been here before, right?”

“No,” Eliot shook his head as he handed Parker her drink and she pulled up a stool. “No, this is different. This ain’t the booze or whatever. It’s like... it’s like he was fine and then suddenly, bam, he just wasn’t Nate anymore.”

Parker nodded along in agreement as Hardison rolled his eyes.

“C’mon, man,” he said to Eliot. “You’re making it sound like he got possessed or had some kind of stroke when we weren’t even looking, neither of which is exactly likely to happen without us realising.”

Eliot had to agree that what he was saying sounded strange. He knew it and he accepted it, but he was still correct in what he said. Something wasn’t right, Nate wasn’t right, not in that one odd moment and after. It could be they went up to the apartment now and found he was completely back to normal. There was just as much chance that he wouldn’t be, and since none of them could put their finger on what exactly was strange or different, there was no way to fix it.

“You fix your computer?” Eliot asked Hardison absently as the hacker flipped open his laptop and tapped a few keys.

“Seriously? That was weird!” he declared, turning the screen so both the hitter and Parker could see. “Not a thing wrong now,” he told them. “Just as soon as I got it home and flipped it on, not a single thing messed up.”

Parker frowned hard at that and shared her worried look with Eliot.

“This is getting creeeepier,” she said in that special way that only Parker could. “First Nate starts acting weird and then Hardison’s computer...” she shuddered involuntarily. “You think this place is haunted or something?” she asked Eliot in a whisper.

“Grow up,” he rolled his eyes at her. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Parker. That is not what’s happening here.”

“Hey, you were the one that said Nate weren’t acting right,” Hardison cut in. “He did seem out of it real suddenly.”

“Yeah, and he couldn’t even find the booze in his own kitchen,” Parker added with a look.

It was all true, everything they were saying, but coming up with an explanation seemed impossible. They were all smart in their own way, but there was a reason why Nate was the Mastermind. Right now, the problem was with him so they couldn’t exactly ask him for advice or help. Something was odd, that much Eliot was sure of, and the way Hardison’s computer flipped out at the same time as Nate, that was the oddest part of all. It unsettled the usually unflappable hitter, and he didn’t like that feeling at all.

“Oh, come on you lot!” said Sophie as she suddenly appeared in the far door of the bar that led to both the back room and the stairs. “It’s nine in the morning and you’re all drinking?” she checked, looking astonished, not even caring when Hardison insisted on showing her his own drink was just a soda. “And you have the gall to call Nate an alcoholic,” she rolled her eyes. “Let’s go!” she clapped her hands and gestured for them to come along already.

Sometimes the grifter was just a little too motherly for everyone’s comfort, but that didn’t mean they didn’t all do as they were told. Still, ever the rebel, Eliot did make a point of finishing his beer before he followed on behind the others.

* * *

“This is ridiculous...” Sam muttered to himself as he continued to rifle through papers and came up completely empty on how to move forward with this con.

No matter which way he looked at it, he was not a criminal mastermind, with or without the moral compass, and he could not figure out how to make this work. It made him wonder why God or Time or whatever was leaping him around would bring him here and put him in the place of the original man who was bound to know what to do in this particular situation.

“How’re we doin’, champ?” asked a voice then, and Sam looked up first with surprise and then with a wide smile.

“Al,” he sighed with relief. “Please, tell me you have some good news for me, because right now I’m kinda lacking,” he said, waving the papers in his hands around with defeat.

“Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” said Al, tipping his hand back and forth in a so-so kind of gesture. “See the good news is, Ziggy re-calculated the odds and now she thinks your leap has nothing to do with this con,” he explained.

“Okay, so what’s the bad news?” asked Sam as he got up from his seat and followed Al around the spacious apartment.

“Well, that’s two-fold,” his friend smiled awkwardly. “See, the con ran smoothly enough for the most part, so you need to copy exactly what Nathan Ford would’ve done if he were here...”

“How am I supposed to know what he would do?” asked Sam desperately, walking around Al to see his face when he tried to avoid eye contact.

“Yeah, well, that’s kinda the bad news,” he admitted, rocking on his heels, “but it could be worse. See, I got to talking to our Mr Ford and, y’know, the guy really opens up after a bottle of scotch.”

“Al, you gave alcohol to a guy you know has a problem with drink?” Sam checked, arms folded across his chest and showing he was clearly unimpressed. “You’re enabling his addiction!”

“Hey, don’t focus on that,” advised Al. “Focus on the fact that I got the details of how Nate was going to make this con work...” he frowned then, rushing to the door suddenly and passing clean through it before Sam’s eyes, before appearing again a second later, “and also the fact that your team are on their way up the stairs right now!” he said, gesturing madly.

“Oh boy!” Sam exclaimed as he rushed to tidy away the papers he was sure he couldn’t explain to the group of thieves on their way to meet him. “Al, I don’t see how I’m going to do this,” he said, perhaps a little too loudly.

“Well, first off, you’re gonna stop yelling before they think you’ve gone completely wacky and are talking to yourself,” the observer advised. “Then you’re gonna explain the plan that I’ll explain to you from the notes I got from Nate,” he said, gesturing to the hand-link on which he had all the necesssary information.

Sam was about to call Al a life saver and thank him profusely for his help when suddenly it was too late. The door swung open and in came Sophie, followed by Hardison, Parker, and finally Eliot. Sam-as-Nate put on a smile, and greeted them all fairly cheerfully. The youngest three looked at him like he had a screw loose and immediately he turned his expression more neutral.

“I’d assume the smile means we have a plan?” said Sophie as she took her seat at the counter and the rest of the team followed suit.

“Ooh, honey, I got all kinds of plans for you and me,” said Al with a leer as he hovered over Sophie’s shoulder, getting a good view down her low cut top.

Sam looked daggers at the observer, but knew he couldn’t say a word without arousing suspicion. Right now he did need Al to concentrate on the plan though, and he was going to have to do the same. This guy they were trying to catch out was, as Al would say, a real nozzle. He deserved to be taken for a ride, to lose the riches he had made through nefarious means. Sure, this wasn’t exactly what Sam was here for, but until either Ziggy figured out what the real issue was or Al had a chance to tell him about it, Sam would just have to try his best to give these thieves instruction and get the job done. That was easier said than done, not least because Parker looked like she was barely listening already, and Eliot was staring at ‘Nate’ as if he wanted to kill him - from what Sam had been reading, he was more than capable.

“Um, Hardison?” said Sam uncertainly, glad when the guy behind the computer looked up at him. “Can I have your attention for a moment?” he asked.

“Yeah, man, it’s cool” the hacker nodded. “I just ain’t sure what’s goin’ on with my laptop is all,” he shook his head. “I gotta be gettin’ interference from someplace... Every time I here, it’s going all crazy on me,” he said, waving a hand at the screen in an appropriately ‘crazy’ gesture.

“Huh,” said Sam, looking to Al and back, wondering if it was his own presence or the hologram that might be affecting the technology. “Well, we’ll worry about that later,” he advised. “First we need to concentrate on bringing this guy down,” he said, pointing to the screen on which the rich man’s picture was displayed.

“I got your back, Sam,” Al promised, stepping up beside him.

“Okay, so here’s how we’re going to teach Grant Williams a lesson he’ll never forget...”


	3. Chapter 3

Sam wasn’t so sure he liked this. Usually when he was dropped into the life of another man (or woman, come to that) it was to put something right. Since he was here with a bunch of criminals, you might imagine his purpose was to stop whatever crime they were wanting to commit, and yet the opposite appeared to be true so far.

Al seemed quite determined that the group’s con must run exactly as before, since it worked out well for everyone. This Grant Williams they were taking down needed to be dealt with. He may be a man of big business, supposedly charitable and decent and all, but he was not as righteous as he seemed. The charities he supposedly started were not for real, most of the money going into his own pocket and not to those who needed it. He was ripping off the poor and innocent, left and right, but proving it was not so easy, not for any normal person.

The Leverage crew were different, that Sam had learnt fast. His being the supposed Mastermind behind their plans gave him some problems, until Al showed up to explain how the job must go down. Sam, looking and sounding to the team just like Nate, repeated everything Al told him to say, with a little of his own spin thrown on it. They didn’t seem to notice he was any different or if they did, they never said anything, just accepted their roles in the new plan and headed out to prepare to do what must be done.

Since Williams was there when Sophie was revealed to be a fraud on the first go-around of this con, Parker was going to have to take point when the gang hit a swanky ball at a hotel down town. Hardison had hoped to be her escort, but it was made clear to him he was needed in the van to operate the computer. Sam had actually said he could handle it himself, until Sophie laughed at what she presumed to be a joke, and Hardison balked at what he saw as sarcasm on the Mastermind’s part. Nate didn’t know about computers, Sam needed to remember that.

It was decided that Eliot would be Parker’s escort. He could keep her safe if trouble occurred, and they’d make a more convincing pair than Parker and Nate. Sam was grateful the team saw it that way. Though he spent all his life leaping around pretending to be other people, he wasn’t sure that the pressure of playing a man grifting as another man committing a crime was something he could handle right now!

So, here they were, four thieves and a quantum physicist inside of a thief’s body. Sam wasn’t sure how to handle this whole con thing, especially now Al was gone. He only hoped his own intelligence and quick thinking would serve him well if anything went wrong, which apparently it had the last time they tried this.

“You okay?” asked Sophie, putting her hand on his knee and startling Sam from deep thought.

“Yeah, yes,” he told her, forcing a smile. “I’m fine. Just hoping it works out this time around.”

“Of course it will,” she assured him with a smile he was sure had bewitched many a man over the years, not to mention her fingers that were still squeezing his thigh. “Parker got the files from the safe before. Now we know that’s enough, it’s just a case of tagging his phone to get the account numbers and we’re home and dry,” she rattled off easily. “We trust you, Nate,” she told him in such a way as to make Sam swallow very hard.

“Hardison,” he said, sliding his chair over to where the hacker was watching the ballroom via a piggyback on the security cameras. “How’re we doing?” he asked.

“Just fine so far,” he agreed. “Parker and Eliot are in. A little sweet talking of this Williams guy, get up close, and lifting what we need from him ain’t gonna be no problem at all,” he explained. “From there it’s all me doing my sweet funky, and all the money pouring out of Williams accounts, into the pockets off the less fortunate... oh, and the Feds taking our little bad-man thief away to the big house,” he grinned, a wide toothy grin of hacker happiness.

Sam smiled too, nodding along, so glad that Al had come and told him how to run this con before. He only hoped he managed to leap before another job came in. This was all a little much to deal with, with Sophie seemingly coming onto him, and the role of a criminal mastermind to play, albeit it a good one. That wasn’t even counting the fact he had up to four voices in his head at any one time thanks to these comms devices.

“We got the cell,” said Eliot quietly. “Transferring details now,” he confirmed.

“Er, good work, guys,” replied Sam as Nate, hoping that was what the mastermind would normally do - it seemed likely.

“Now, would you stop staring at people like they’re aliens,” said Eliot then, presumably to Parker, as they walked away from Williams.

“I just don’t get all the froofy dresses and shoes you cant walk in,” she sighed, as her partner slipped the cell phone into her hand and got her attention.

“Could you just go put this back in the guys pocket?” he prompted her, clearly getting aggravated.

Parker huffed and walked away to do just that, stumbling some on her stilettos. Sam winced as he watched her on the camera feed, but not half so much as when Eliot’s voice continued to mutter on over the comms.

“Then maybe I can get to know some of the real women here,” he said, making Parker go wide-eyed.

The cell was back in Williams pocket, the job was done, but Parker did not look happy, far from it. She stood in the centre of the ballroom floor, with evident hurt in her eyes. Sophie was the first to react.

“Eliot!” she said in a scolding tone, much like a mother would.

“Hey, mama, you know you don’t have to take that from him,” Hardison cut in, though it was clear from how Eliot put a hand to his face that he was already sorry for what he’d done.

“Damnit, Hardison! You’re not helping,” he hissed at his friend as he hurried over to the little blonde thief. “Parker, I didn’t mean you’re not just as beautiful as any other woman here,” he assured her, knowing how fragile she could be sometimes. “I was just... I’m sorry, okay?”

“Guys?” Sam cut in, feeling so very awkward, especially when Williams started looking around suspiciously. “Can we just concentrate on what we’re here to do?”

“Eliot, just get yourself and Parker out of there!” Sophie devised as she saw what Nate had seen and reacted fast.

“What do you think I’m tryin’ to do!” he complained, all in angry whispers as he looked back at the mark and realised Grant was staring at him too. “I’m just... Parker?” he turned back around and was startled to find himself alone. “Hardison, where’d Parker go?” he asked the hacker, who had been a little distracted by the information spooling on another screen, the stuff from Williams cell, Sam reckoned.

“I dunno, man,” he shook his head then. “Maybe she’s headed back without you”

“And what if she’s not?” Sophie sighed, putting her finger to her ear. “Parker? Parker!” she called but there was no answer. “Nate, she’s not answering comms,” she said, looking equal parts worried and frustrated as she looked at Sam.

“Oh, boy!”

* * *

“She could’ve blown the whole bloody con!” exclaimed Sophie with a look of sheer exasperation. “I mean, I thought she was getting better at handling these kinds of situations. It’s not like we were having her come on to a mark or anything, she only had to hang off Eliot’s arm for a while,” she continued to rave, whilst Sam-as-Nate watched her pace up and down, unsure what to say for the best. “I mean, yes, he said a thoughtless thing, but he’s a bloke, it’s what they do. I just can’t understand why Parker would react that way!”

“I can,” said a voice, though Sophie never heard.

Al in his hologram form was only ever going to be seem by Sam, but he was extremely glad to have his friend the observer show up with what appeared to be answers.

“Well, maybe Parker just needs some alone time to get her head straight,” said Sam when he realised Sophie was expecting an answer. “I’m sure she’ll come back and explain herself later.”

“Yeah, she’ll come back. This time, but she won’t explain,” Al confirmed, even as Sophie spoke over him.

“Seriously?” she shook her head, “It’s like you’ve completey forgotten what Parker can be like,” she waved her arms in emphatic gestures of frustration. “Sometimes I wonder where your head is Nate!” she complained as she stormed off into the kitchen area.

Sam ran a hand over his face and sighed. Just when he thought he was doing okay with this leap, the whole thing was crashing down around his ears. He had one woman on the run and another that was suffering from a bout of British dramatics. Honestly, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take!

“What do we know, Al?” he whispered to his friend, gesturing for the hologram to come closer whilst Sophie’s back was turned.

“Well, Ziggy thinks she knows for sure why you’re here now, but it’s not an easy fix,” he said as he faded through the couch and came to stand close to ‘Nate’. “See, Parker will come back this time, but in a couple of days she’ll run again and that time, she’ll be gone for good.”

“So she leaves the team, that’s sad,” Sam agreed quietly, pretending to be sifting through papers at Hardison’s desk, “but it’s not the end of the world.”

“It is for Parker,” replied Al, looking far too solemn. “When she leaves the second time, she doesn’t get a choice about coming back. Within two weeks, she’s dead.”

“Dead?” Sam gasped. “How?”

“According to the records she was just another body found floating in Boston Harbour,” he shook his head sadly. “Only twenty seven years old, that’s not right, Sam,” he sighed heavily.

Sam knew he couldn’t let that happen. Parker was quirky to say the least, definitely one of the stranger people he’d met in his leaping around through time, but she was sweet in her way, and doing good things with this team. Besides, nobody should die on the wrong side of thirty if it could be helped, and that was what Sam had been put here (and so many other places and times) to do.

“Was it… suicide?” he asked in a whisper, almost not wanting to know.

“Nobody knows for sure if she jumped or if she was pushed,” explained Al, “but one thing’s for sure, her team didn’t handle her death well,” he explained. “If we don’t fix this it’s not just her life that ends, it’s all five of these people.”

“They all die?” Sam checked, realising he’d spoken too loudly when Sophie called from the kitchen and asked what he was muttering about. “Nothing, just… talking to myself,” he told her with a fake smile before turning back to his fake paper shuffling and Al’s explanation.

“Well, not exactly,” the observer went on. “Nate hits the bottle one more time, Sophie walks away because she can’t stand to see him destroy himself, and they never see each other again,” he went on. “I guess she changed her name again, we can’t find her in the records much after she leaves Boston,” he went on. “As for Hardison and Spencer, they take Parker’s death pretty hard. Alec retreats into himself, suffers depression and eventually overdoses on fluoxetine after a couple of years of lonely existence. Eliot goes on a witch hunt, positive that foul play was involved in Parker’s death. He ends up fatally shot inside five… no four months,” he explained, smacking the handlink for playing him up at a crucial moment.

Sam sank down onto the stool, feeling thoroughly sick. Though they were essentially criminals, this team were doing so much good. The idea of one of them dying, and the rest suffering so badly seemed very wrong. These supposed bad guys were actually the good guys, and Sam had to help them, put right what once went wrong like always, to fix this. If he could stop Parker bolting the second time, he could keep this crew together and everything would be alright. Then he would leap again and leave them to their good works.

“Nate?” Sophie said as she wandered over, surprised to see him looking so rattled.

“Huh? Oh, I’m okay,” he told her, spotting Al leaving through his usual unseen door over he grifter’s shoulder. “I was just... I’m worried about Parker”

“Aaw, she’ll be fine,” said Sophie, putting her hand to his shoulder. “I really shouldn’t get so frustrated, she can’t help the way she is, and I certainly shouldn’t take it out on you,” she sighed heavily.

Sam could tell as he looked up into her eyes that she meant what she said. Sure, Sophie was a grifter and a thief, she made her fortune and based her reputation on her ability to charm a man, make him say or do or feel whatever she wanted. Still, he believed he saw some honesty in her. She loved this team, they all cared deeply for each other. They wouldn’t fall apart so easily with the loss of one member if they weren’t a family in some sense or other.

“It’s fine,” he said, putting his hand atop Sophie’s now. “I’m sure she’ll be home soon and we’ll figure this out,” he smiled. “At least the con ran smoothly this time,” he noted.

“Yes, those less fortunate have their money, and Grant Williams is on his way to where he belongs. All’s right with the world,” she agreed with a nod. “I told you I believed in you. I knew we’d get the job done in the end. We always do,” she said as she leant down to kiss his cheek.

Sam honestly wasn’t sure if she was just being friendly in a normal way or if she was trying to come on to him. When she said she should probably go and strutted out the door, the way it seemed only Sophie could, Sam felt he was no further forward in figuring out what she and Nate meant to each other exactly.

He figured he could worry about that later, after all, Parker was who he was really here to help. Maybe if he just talked to her about what was on her mind, he’d be able to convince her it could all be figured out, that she should stay with the team that clearly cared about her. He hoped it would be that simple, but past experience suggested otherwise!


	4. Chapter 4

Sam was learning a lot today, mostly about Parker, and mostly things he would almost rather not know. The young thief was quirky, that much he learnt early on, but after she bolted and the team alternated between panic and resolve just about every hour on the hour, he started to realise there was a lot more going on in Parker’s head than he ever could have imagined.

“You know how fragile she is, Eliot,” Sophie was complaining as she made tea for everyone. “You can’t be that thoughtless when you speak to her.”

“Soph, I wasn’t even talking to her, just... near her,” he finished lamely. “This isn’t all my fault anyway. This guy right here?” he said, gesturing towards Hardison. “Wasn’t exactly helping.”

“Hey, I care about Parker,” the hacker cut in, as Nate’s eyes jumped from one person to the next and around again.

It was like watching a three-way ping pong match for Sam, but he needed to know more about what was happening here.

“Parker’s tougher than you all give her credit for,” said Eliot definitely. “Okay, the way she grew up, all those foster families, on the streets and everything. If she can get through that, nothin’ I say can bother her that much.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way,” the grifter argued immediately, even as she put down a delicate cup of tea in front of her team-mate. “Parker has come to trust us, our opinions matter to her. She might pretend they don’t sometimes, but they do,” she insisted.

Sam wasn’t sure what to think, as the bickering went on. It certainly didn’t seem to do any good presuming what was wrong until Parker came back to tell them. Of course, the worry was that she wouldn’t come back. Al had insisted this was the first time and that she would return, only to go again before long if Sam failed to prevent it, as he was here to do.

Just when the leaper was starting to get a headache between the over-thinking and the arguing, his friend appeared. The observer signalled towards the bathroom and Sam resisted rolling his eyes, since he and Al did seem to end up in those places together a lot lately.

“I’m just gonna... yeah.”

He didn’t even bother to give the full excuse when he realised nobody was listening anyway, just talking over each other about Parker and whose fault it was that she had run away.

Al passed through the wall as Sam took the door and they ended up in the bathroom together a moment later.

“Al, you should hear what they’ve been saying about Parker,” said the man who looked like Nate when he peered into the mirror. “Her childhood, it was terrible. Foster care and, and living on the streets...”

“I know,” Al nodded sadly. “We tracked her past as much as we could. Even Ziggy doesn’t figure well with people who change their names around so much, but we got the gist, and the gist ain’t pretty,” he shook his head. “I thought I suffered being in the orphanage and all, but this kid? It does not make for nice reading, Sam. Of course, this team have her now and she has them, and she found some happiness here, so it all kinda worked out.”

“’Cept if I can’t figure out what’s bothering her and straighten it out, this team won’t last too long,” he whispered crossly. “She’ll be dead, Al, and I can’t have that on my conscience.”

“Plus you’ll never leap,” said Al thoughtfully, knowing a young woman’s death ought to be more important, but by the same token, Sam’s life as he knew it would be over too if couldn’t ever get out of this place. “But there’s good news too,” he went on as he checked the hand-link that buzzed and whirred into life of its own accord. “We got a lock on Parker,” he gestured. “She’s on her way back,” he smiled, “in fact, she’s...”

The loud slam of a door being swung shut got the attention of both men and Sam realised that Parker must have just returned. He left Al with a smile and hurried back out into the room, just in time to see Sophie grab the blonde in an awkward hug. Eliot was wandering over behind Hardison, looking uncomfortable, but he did seem to realise this was at least partly his fault now. He was a big enough man to admit when he was wrong or sorry it seemed.

“Hey, darlin’,” he said, putting a wary hand to her shoulder. “Y’know, I didn’t mean to...”

“It wasn’t your fault, not really,” Parker squirmed.

Explaining herself was not her greatest skill, far from it. Being uncomfortable with social situations and shying away from any kind of emotion seemed like the norm. Sam was sure that was the problem, that Parker would probably get much further if she could just talk to someone. Maybe these people never gave her the chance, or used to and had since given up trying. That seemed to be what he was here for, and Sam was determined to make it his mission to get Parker to open up and talk things through, so he didn’t have to worry about her running away in fear of whatever was going on inside her head again.

“Regardless of whose fault you think it was, Parker, I really think you should let Eliot apologise if he wants to,” he advised, thinking it must be better for everyone to get things off their chest if they were willing, “and then maybe Hardison can take a turn too,” he added with a pointed look at the hacker.

“Woah, hold a second,” he said, with his hands raised in mock surrender. “What did I do? He’s the one who was rude and insulting,” he said, hiking a thumb over his shoulder at an angry looking Eliot.

“You didn’t exactly help, Hardison,” Sophie pointed out. “Stirring up trouble when Eliot made what was likely to be an innocent mistake.”

“It was,” the hitter confirmed, turning all his attention to Parker who had since wandered into the kitchen, clearly feeling more than a little awkward that she caused all this. “Parker!” he called as he went in after her, and tried to get her attention away from the cupboards she was searching through, quite probably for cereal. “Babe, c’mon,” he urged her to look at him. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to make it sound like you’re not just as good as any other woman who was at that party. You’re better,” he smiled genuinely.

Parker nodded dumbly, but seemed no happier or less awkward about the whole thing. She only looked more like a deer in headlights if it were possible as Hardison wandered over and gave his own apology.

“And if I made things tougher, I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I just… well, we don’t want you runnin’ out on us like that again, okay? Scared the living daylights out of me you weren’t coming back this time.”

“He’s not the only one,” Sophie confirmed, walking over with Nate on her heels.

“So, maybe next time we all have a problem we can talk it through, instead of running away?” Sam tried, only to get four matching looks of astonishment from his team. “What?” he checked.

“So, when we have problem, running is bad, talking is good, and drinking is best of all?” Parker checked.

Sam honestly wasn’t sure if she was trying to make a joke or was being completely serious. As the others continued to stare at him, with equal parts amusement and shock written on their faces, he realised what they were getting at. Al had definitely said he got the real Nate to open up by way of a bottle of scotch, and the kitchen cabinets had consisted of little real food, mostly booze, soda, and coffee. 

‘I’m an alcoholic?’ he thought to himself. ‘Oh, boy!’

“Um, maybe we should just all move on from this little upset,” he said eventually, forcing a smile. “I’m sure you all want to head home, get some rest and all before, um, our next job comes in,” he suggested, hands shoved in his pockets and rocking back and forth on the spot awkwardly.

He didn’t look very much like Nate right now. He didn’t really sound like him either, but their mastermind always got touchy and weird when his alcoholism got mentioned, so the team paid very little mind. He was right, they did all need some rest after stressing so much over Parker. Now that situation was resolved, there was no use in hanging around.

They filed out of the apartment, hitter, hacker, and grifter, until only Parker was left. She went towards the window instead of the door and Sam reacted.

“Parker!”

He was so loud he startled her into physically jumping, and turning around at such speed she nearly knocked herself over, despite how graceful she usually was.

“What?” she checked, competely baffled why her wanting to open the window had made him react in such a way.

Sam heaved a sigh of relief when he spotted the rope beyond the glass and remembered the thief’s rappelling skills. Of course she wasn’t going to throw herself bodily out of a window one floor up. She had been upset but surely not suicidal, and nobody would do that whilst somebody was stood here watching, at least nobody with any modicum of sanity.

“I, er…” he floundered when he realised he now needed to think of something to say to her. “Could you maybe stay a while?” he asked her. “I was hoping to talk to you, about Eliot and Hardison.”

Sam watched Parker as she looked from him, out of the window, to the floor and back round again. She was weighing up her options. She probably did want to talk but from what Al had said about her past, he could also see why she would be skittish. Parker was one of the unluckier kids in the system. She never had anyone she could really truly trust, not until this team came along and became the family she always craved and never had before. Sam hoped that given their ages, he could make Nate a father figure for the young woman, assuming he might well have been before, if not a very good one up to yet. Maybe that was what he was here to change.

Parker sighed like it was a huge inconvenience to stay, but she did close the window, wander over to the couch, and throw herself into the cushions with a thud. She was willing to give it a try, the talking thing, and that was all Sam could hope for right now. All he had to do now was take care not to make matters any worse than they already were as he broached what was undoubtedly going to be a tricky subject.

“So, you and the guys,” he said as he wandered over and perched on the arm of the nearby chair. “You get along, most of the time.”

“Yeah,” Parker nodded once and looked decidedly wary. “We’re a team.... or maybe a little more than a team,” she said, recalling words Hardison had once said to her years ago.

That phrase, whatever it meant, and Sam wasn’t entirely sure if he was supposed to know or not, seemed to bring first a smile and then a deep frown to the little thief’s face. Maybe she did know what he wanted to talk to her about. Maybe he’d got lucky in his own reading of people and come up with the real reason Parker was so uncomfortable and felt the need to run away.

Close relationships were foreign to her, and it was clear that was what she had come to form with all these people on her team. She was so affronted by what Eliot implied at the party last night and at the same time Hardison was so quick to defend her. It seemed to Sam there was a case of some kind of love triangle forming here, and poor Parker, just not being equipped to deal with any matters of the heart, be they hers or anyone elses, felt the need to bolt at the first sign of trouble.

“See, the more than a team thing,” he said after a moments pause. “That’s the part where I think we’re having a problem...”

“You want me to leave, don’t you?” Parker’s reaction was so sudden and so violent, that Sam physically jumped and almost slipped onto the floor with a thud. “Because it’s a problem, I’m making it a problem,” Parker rambled on as Sam decided staying on his feet might be better when she got up to as if ready to make a run for it again.

“No, sweetheart,” he told her, putting his hands to her shoulders on instinct more than anything else and speaking kindly to her. “You’re not a problem,” he promised her.

The look on her face was puzzled at best and completely freaked out at worst. She looked left and right at the hands on her shoulders and squirmed a little beneath the light touch.

“What’s the matter?” he checked, removing his hands fast for fear of her next reaction that was likely to be as unpredictable as anything else about Parker right now.

“You called me sweetheart,” she said, looking up at him, narrowing her eyes as if to try and see into or through him somehow. “You never do that. Sophie calls me sweetie sometimes, Eliot says darlin’ and babe to just about every girl, and Hardison calls me woman or mama, but not you,” she explained, eyes boring into him still as if she really could see through the illusion of Nate and into the soul which was Sam. “You never call me anything but Parker,” she repeated, and Sam tried his best to evade her gaze then.

“I’m sorry, I… I don’t know what I was thinking,” he forced out a chuckle of nervous laugher and backed up a step, running a hand over his hair. “I guess I was just trying to be nice,” he told her honestly then. “I... I care about you, Parker, I care about this whole team, and I… I want us to all stay together,” he said seriously, watching her watching him, waiting for a reaction that seemed to take forever to come.

“Me too,” she nodded eventually. “So what’s the problem?”

“Well, I don’t think we really have one,” confirmed Sam as he checked behind him for the chair before daring to attempt to sit down again. “So long as…” he continued as he turned back, only to find Parker was gone.

There was a frown on Nate’s face as Sam stood again and turned circles, trying to figure out how the thief appeared to have vanished in seconds. He spotted the rope beyond the window shimmy slightly, perhaps a little more than the breeze would manage alone.

“Wow,” he said to himself, more than a little impressed by how quickly and quietly Parker could move. “No wonder she’s one of the world’s greatest thieves.”

Sam heaved a sigh of relief that at least that awkward conversation was over. With a bit of luck, Parker understood that he was here for her now. Maybe she would find a way to unscramble whatever was going on in that head of hers with regards to Eliot and Hardison, and everything would be okay. Of course, Sam doubted it would be that simple. If everything were permanently fixed, he would be leaping right here and now. Instead he stood alone in the middle of the apartment, as a knock came on the door.

“It’s never that simple, is it?” he said, eyes turned to the heavens a moment before he headed for the door to see who was visiting now.

“Hi,” said Sophie with a smile that might’ve been irresistible at any other moment to any other man.

“Hi,” Sam echoed back. “Did you forget something...?” he asked, but the grifter shook her head.

“I know I shouldn’t be encouraging you,” she admitted, gesturing with the bottle of wine in her hand, “but it has been a rough day for all of us...”

She left the rest of what she might have said hanging in mid-air and Sam got the distinct impression it wasn’t only alcohol she was trying to tempt Nate with. Next time Al popped up, he was really going to have to ask if there was any way to know the possible romantic history between the man he was playing and the grifter stood before him now. It could be pretty dangerous messing around in peoples love lives when you don’t know the rules. Sam had learnt this the hard way and he didn’t much like the idea of doing it again here, not when the relationships amongst these team members were so seemingly fragile to begin with.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea right now, Sophie,” he said, trying to close the door inch by inch, still smiling so as not to seem offensive. “I’m pretty tired and you could probably use some rest yourself before the next big heist or whatever.”

“Really? I’m standing here offering you.... quality time” she said with a pointed look, “and you’re talking about cons? Thanks a bloody lot, Nate,” she said crossly then.

Sam was barely listening. He knew he should be, but his mind had gone off at a tangent at the sounds of her words.

“Quality time,” he echoed. “Yeah, that could be just what this team needs,” he smiled widely.

“The team?” checked Sophie, feeling as if she had turned over two pages at once somehow. “Are you talking about a new job?”

“No, no, not a job, that’s just the point,” said Nate, looking far too smiley to be himself somehow. “Tomorrow, we should all spend some quality time together, doing something fun, a little team building exercise,” he explained with enthusiasm evident. “This could really work!”

“Okay,” Sophie frowned, still feeling a little lost, wondering if Nate had actually started drinking way before now and she just hadn’t noticed.

“That’s great, I’m gonna call everybody and let them know the plan,” Sam continued to enthuse. “Meet here tomorrow, say ten o’clock?”

“In the morning?” asked the grifter with wide eyes.

“See you then,” Sam grinned with Nate’s face before closing the door, leaving a heartily confused and slightly affronted Sophie to be bemused all by herself.


	5. Chapter 5

Nobody amongst team Leverage was sure what to think when they arrived at McRorys for their meeting with Nate. He had left messages for them all on their team cells, saying that he wanted to see them back at the bar next day, but that it had nothing to do with a job. That was actually more nerve-wracking for all concerned than any actual heist might have been.

They had all noticed how strangely he’d been acting, the younger three amongst the team having discussed it days ago. They hadn’t dare bring it up with Sophie for fear of her reaction. It could be something occurring between the never-quite-a-couple that was causing the weirdness and nobody wanted to get in the middle of that, mostly because they didn’t have a death wish. Imagine the surprise of hitter, hacker, and thief then, when it was the grifter herself that brought up Nate’s strange behaviour this time.

“I’m not saying he’s changed in a bad way,” she insisted as they gathered in a booth and sipped their soft drinks. “He’s just... Its almost as if he’s not Nate right now.”

“Totally what I thought!” said Parker, slamming her hand on the table to emphasise her point and making every single person visibly flinch with the shock of the sound. “It’s like you look into his eyes, and there’s another person in there instead,” she said, sounding as eerie as ever anyone could.

Eliot was so close to telling her ‘there’s something wrong with you’, but soon changed his mind. He still regretted the way she ran off before when he made a simple comment. The fact was, as nutty as Parker could be, he did care a lot about her, maybe more than he should sometimes, but he never let that be mentioned or shown in any way. As if this team didn’t have enough relationship problems between them!

“Sweetie, I hardly think Nate has another man inside him,” said Sophie with a smile, before realising how that sounded. “I mean... oh!”

“Yeah, we got it, Soph,” Hardison assured her. “Whatever goin’ on here, it’s something freaky,” he decided. “And it ain’t just Nate either...” he went on, turning his laptop around to show the others the screen.

“Even I know that ain’t right,” said Eliot, tilting is head as he stared at the display that flickered and wavered before them.

“So the screen is broken, so what?” said Parker, sipping her soda. “What does that have to do with Nate?”

“It’s like I told ya before, mama,” the hacker explained. “This thing only happens when I here,” he gestured across the laptops screen as he turned the computer back around to face him. “It’s like some kinda interference or somethin’ but when I go away from the bar, we all good. Closer I get to the apartment upstairs, the worse case of the jitters this thing gets.”

“That could be anything,” Eliot shrugged. “The microwave maybe, or a damn walkie-talkie you left switched on from the last job...”

“You don’t think I thought of all that?” challenged Hardison. “Hacker, hitter,” he gestured to himself and then Eliot, “You for the hittin’, me for the hackin’. I didn’t tell you why a guy managed to bust your nose that one time, did I?”

“Actually, you did try to...” said Sophie, putting her hands up in surrender when Hardison looked daggers at her. “Look, this isn’t helping,” she said after a moment’s pause. “Nate is acting a little off, but he’s not drinking heavily again, we know that much. He actually turned down my offer last night... of a drink,” she added fast, even though that was only half the story.

“I still think maybe he’s possessed,” Parker threw in. “That actually might be cool,” she smiled then, making everybody want to move a little further way from her in the booth.

“It’s probably just stress or something,” said Eliot with a shrug. “Until he gets reckless or stupid about important stuff, maybe it’s better if we don’t worry about it,” he decided, and the others all seemed to agree.

“Agreed,” Parker nodded once.

“Yeah, sure,” said Sophie, nodding along, “but it’s still pretty weird, what with Hardison’s computer and Nate going odd at the same time.”

“I don’t know, I kinda like this Nate,” the thief shrugged from across the table. “He’s not as creepy, and he’s friendlier too.”

Before anyone had a chance to talk further on that topic, the man himself appeared in the doorway to the back room.

“Excellent, everybody’s here!” he smiled too widely, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture that just wasn’t Nate somehow.

The trouble was, no matter how strange he was acting, it had to be Nate. He looked the same, sounded the same, and his brain worked just as fast on a con. He was just a little different, a little off kilter, and maybe Parker hadn’t been completely wrong when she said friendlier too.

“What is it we’re all here for, Nate?” asked Sophie as she got up from her seat. “I mean, you said a meeting but not a job, and last night... well, quality time? That didn’t make much sense.”

“I meant exactly what I said,” the mastermind assured them all. “I just thought we spend so much time on cons and heists, maybe it would be nice to... I don’t know, have some group activity that doesn’t involve breaking the law,” he shrugged easily, like what he was saying made perfect sense.

Of course to Sam it was all very clear. He wanted his team to be closer, friendlier, more comfortable which each other, so none of them (namely Parker) felt like running for the hills. Sure, they functioned well on a professional level and everybody got along with their work, but socially none of them were really that adept at being what the others needed, or so it seemed to the physicist. If he could just get them to understand each other better, to bond like a real family, in a greater sense than they even were now, maybe he could prevent a tragedy occurring. The problem was, none amongst the four faces he was looking at now seemed anything like impressed with his plans.

“Well, I think that sounds like a wonderful idea,” Sophie enthused a moment later, mostly for the sake of backing her man.

The others still looked dubious, until the grifter started making faces, encouraging them to go with her on this. Parker caved first, figuring whatever was planned might be fun, and Hardison followed her because that was the way of things. Eliot looked unimpressed even now, but decided that since everyone else was going to join in he may as well too. He had come all the way down here for this so-called meeting, and he felt he kind of owed the team, after being at least partly to blame for Parker splitting before. He could handle whatever this smiley incarnation of Nate wanted to throw at him, he supposed.

“So long as I don’t have to take off my clothes or talk about my feelings,” he muttered as he slid out of the booth. “I’m in.”

“Excellent,” Sam clapped Nate’s hands with a little too much excitement. “I think you’re all really going to enjoy this.”

Somehow the others just weren’t so sure they believed him.

* * *

Nate’s idea of team building exercises had actually started out pretty well. Nobody minded sharing tales of past jobs, it was stuff they’d done before anyway, and the games and tests he’d come up with were easy enough and amusing to go with it. It was a weird set up, almost as if they were a real family spending quality time together, but then that seemed to be the point of it.

Sam was quite proud of himself, as he looked around the table at the smiling faces of the Leverage team. He was making real progress here, he was sure of it. If the grin on Parker’s face was anything to go by, there would be no need to worry about her running away anytime soon as had been the original history.

“Okay, so this was fun, but we done here, right?” said Hardison as he finished his food and pushed the plate away.

“Uh-uh,” Sam shook Nate’s head, fighting to speak around a mouthful of the most delicious food he had eaten in a long time. “Fun’s not over yet,” he declared the moment he swallowed. “Eliot, this is just delicious,” he enthused as he continued to eat.

“Thanks,” the hitter said with a wary smile. “It’s not like I didn’t make it before, Nate,” he said, looking sideways at Sophie.

It was just one more strange thing the mastermind had said and done these past few days, and it was added to the mental list they were all keeping.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” he smiled widely. “I know we had it before it’s just… I really like it is all,” he ended lamely, knowing the others were staring and thinking he was strange, but unable to do much about it now. “Okay,” he said then, putting his cutlery down at last and wiping his mouth on a paper napkin. “Let’s get on to the next activity,” he enthused.

Parker was up like a shot. She was having a great time today, since it was all fun and games to her. This was how she figured being a kid ought to be, the childhood she never had with all the joy of friends and family fun. Hardison followed her because that was what he did, and Sophie and Eliot came behind, sharing significant glances. This whole day was just weird from top to bottom, and apparently it wasn’t going to get any better, as they arrived back in the bar from the apartment above, and Nate flipped on the stereo that blared some old-fashioned music.

“What is this?” asked Hardison curiously. “We gonna start a conga line or somethin’?” he asked, not looking entirely impressed by the concept.

“I thought this was limbo music,” said Parker thoughtfully.

“Seriously, you guys?” Sam looked unimpressed.

“It’s the rhumba,” Eliot threw in, a beat before Sophie managed to get it out.

Nobody would be surprised to realise the grifter knew her dances, but Eliot always surprised them when he knew things like that.

“What?” he asked when everyone continued to stare. “It’s a very distinctive rhythm,” he declared, arms folded across his chest defensively.

“Since you know so much about it,” said Sam with a smile, “How about you two start us off?”

He looked to Eliot and Sophie and encouraged them together with a gesture of his hands. Neither looked very sure about it but soon saw the funny side as they faced each other.

“May I have this dance, ma’am?” the hitter asked with an over the top bow.

“You may, kind sir,” Sophie replied in kind, taking his offered hand and going easily into his arms.

They danced the steps without missing a beat, bodies moving to the steady rhythm. Sam was impressed by how well they both moved, not really doubting that Sophie could, but a little shocked by Eliot. Of course, he should’ve known better. Eliot was a fighter, and that took a certain amount of grace and a whole lot of rhythm, the same skills needed for the dance.

“Okay, you two see if you can do any better,” said Sam then as he turned to Parker and Hardison.

Both looked as if they were rabbits caught in the headlights of a Mack truck, and so Sam gently manoeuvred them into each others personal space, placing their hands and instructing them on where to move their feet. Parker picked it up pretty quickly, though she seemed to feel the need to watch her own toes moving around the floor than ever look up at her partner. Hardison struggled to find the beat at first, but once he got it, they did okay.

“Dancing is a great skill and a good way to show trust in each other,” Sam explained as he watched the team strut their stuff. “To dance well together, you must have trust in the other person to do their part, and hold up your end of the bargain by not dropping you in a dip or even stomping on your toes,” he explained.

Parker wasn’t really listening. She didn’t mind the dancing, she had picked it up pretty easy, and it wasn’t a problem for her. Being this close to Hardison was what had her confused. He liked her and she knew it, he made it a little more obvious every day and she really wasn’t sure how to handle it. Of course she liked him too, just not necessarily in the same way, at least she was pretty sure she didn’t. This really wasn’t helping.

“Okay, now let’s switch partners,” suggested Nate, and that hardly made Parker feel better.

In Eliot’s arms, the little thief was all the more freaked out, mostly because she wasn’t. That didn’t even make sense in her own head for a long time, but the more she got to know Eliot, the more Parker realised how much she liked being around him. He cared about her and he took care of her, and sometimes when they got close, like right now, the world kind of went away somehow. She had these feelings, and she couldn’t explain them. It thrilled her and scared her all at the same time, not least because she was sure if she tried to explain, he would laugh in her face.

Besides, if this thing she was feeling was what she figured it must be, it could tear the team apart. This was how Hardison felt about her, so Sophie implied several times. This could never work out well, and it was killing Parker by degrees to try and deal with it alone.

As the music came to a climax in her ears and Eliot’s eyes seemed to bore into her own, Parker forgot how to breathe. He dropped her into a dip and she was completely willing to hit the floor, knocking herself out so all of this would be over for a while. She had never handled emotions and feelings well, and right now she was having way too many.

“I can’t do this,” she said too fast, scrambling to get up and out of Eliot’s embrace. “Not with you.”

He helped her to stand straight and let go of her, but was surprised by her sudden panic. She’d seemed fine a minute ago, or so he thought, though honestly he had been a little distracted by how it felt to hold her that way.

“Oh, okay,” said Nate. “Um, did you want to switch back partners, Parker?” he asked with a kind smile that Sam so often wore.

His making the mastermind so overly friendly wasn’t really helping, just throwing the poor thief further off her game. It was too much pressure, too much change. She just couldn’t handle it, and when Hardison stepped forward with too wide a grin to take her in his arms again, she knew she couldn’t do it.

“No,” she said sharply, fit to burst into tears, backing up a step from the hacker as if the idea of getting close to him scared her to death.

She was gone in a second, bolting out back of the bar and up the stairs to the apartment above.

“What on Earth...?” asked Sophie, feeling completely bemused.

First Nate started acting strangely and now Parker. Of course the thief was more prone to such things, but this was weird even for her.

“And just when things were going so well,” Sam sighed, putting Nate’s hand to his forehead as he felt a pulsing ache begin.

Apparently, he was a fool to think any part of this task would be easy. It was anything but that.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam was getting a headache, and it wasn’t even his own head! He had assumed that if he kept Nate Ford off the booze he would be spared a hangover, and yet dealing with this team and their current situation was making him crave the alcohol Nate seemed famed for downing. This was unbelievable. He had changed everything, completely turned the team’s normal day on its head, and still it resulted with Parker bolting from the room like a startled rabbit.

It had occurred to Sam that maybe he shouldn’t be the one to run after the blonde. It didn’t seem like Nate would usually do that, and so he waited for the others to figure out who was going to give chase to the panicked thief. Sophie seemed the best candidate in a lot of ways, and Eliot had immediately suggested it, but the grifter wasn’t all that willing. Then Hardison threw his opinion in the mix and that was when Sam’s headache kicked up a notch.

“Me? Why am I going?” asked Sophie too loudly. “You’re the one that upset her, Eliot. Again!” she emphasised.

“I didn’t do anything, Sophie,” the hitter countered. “We were just dancing, same as you and Hardison.”

“Is that all you was doin’?” asked the hacker with a look. “You keep your hands where they was meant to be, man?” he checked.

“Yes,” Eliot forced out through gritted teeth. “I’m not dumb, Hardison. You lay a hand wrong on Parker you get stabbed! I ain’t into that.”

“Well, something is making her act this way,” said Sophie, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know Parker has running tendencies, but twice in a couple of days? This I getting ridiculous!”

“I should go see if she’s okay” Hardison shook his head.

“You’re going to make it worse!” Sophie argued, pushing by him, the two of them bickering as they hurried up the stairs together.

Eliot peered after them and frowned as he realised the back door was open. Maybe Parker had gone further than they thought, he realised, as he went out back of the bar.

Sam put his face in his hands, resisting the urge to scream. This was becoming insane.

“Nate?” Eliot called from the back room. “I think she’s gone again,” he confirmed.

Sam peeked through his fingers, feeling suddenly sick. If Parker had just run upstairs to the apartment to hide, then everything might have been okay, but out the door could not be good. This was all starting to sound a little too much like the original history...

“Al?” said Sam, just as loud as he dare. “Al, where are you when I need you?”

* * *

“How’re we doin’ here, Mr Ford?” asked Al with a smile as he walked into the holding room.

“Oh, we’re doing just fine,” answered Nate, sarcasm evident. “Y’know, it’s really swell being flung here into the future to wear spandex and look like some other man, while in my life... yeah, in my life, there’s a physicist playing me, like some really bad production of... well, anything Sophie ever acted in,” he ended with rather less gusto than he’d begun, sinking back into his chair, elbows on his knees.

“Yeah, that’s rough,” the observer sighed as he watched the other man run his hands back through Sam’s hair, looking really tired and frustrated. “If it helps, Sam... er, Dr Beckett isn’t having the best time either,” he explained, leaning back against the table. “It’s no fun for him being bounced around through time by God or fate or whatever.”

“Oh, I dunno,” sighed Nate as he looked up then, “Living other people’s lives can be good. Sometimes it’s nice to get a break from your own,” he said knowingly.

“Ah, yes, you play many parts yourself,” Al nodded along, looking to his hand-link then. “Let’s see we got Tom Baker, Bob Gibson, Dr Melcher, Jimmy Pok- er, Popa...”

“Papadokalis. Yeah, that’s a good one,” Nate smiled, having caught one more person out with the pronunciation of that particular alias.

“At least you get to choose the parts you play,” said Al thoughtfully. “My good buddy Sam, he gets put wherever he’s gotta go and that’s it, no backstory, no clever plan. Just him alone, til I can get there and help him out with a little info,” he explained, tapping the hand-link he held still.

Nate figured that would be tough. He didn’t entirely understand all this, and a part of him still wondered if he was going to wake up soon and find it had all been a whiskey-based dream. Whilst he was here though, he figured he may as well take the facts as they came, and this Sam Beckett guy sure had it rough if this whole time travel thing worked how Al explained it.

“So, my team think he’s me, right?” he checked. “He looks and sounds exactly like me?”

“That’s right,” Al confirmed. “Just how you look and sound like Sam,” he nodded, “but y’know, you shouldn’t worry. He’s not trying to take over your life and he won’t take advantage of your friends or anything, he’s not like that. He’s there to help is all.”

“Better than I could help apparently, even though that’s pretty much my job these days, y’know, to help people,” said Nate, with just a little anger creeping into his tone.

Al understood how he must be feeling. Not having control over what was happening in some important situation or other. It was how he felt himself sometimes when he beamed into Sam’s life as a hologram and something horrible was happening. He couldn’t be seen or heard by any victim or person about to be in danger. He was helpless, much like Nate probably felt now.

“I know you care about your team, Nathan,” said Al kindly, “but something is going to go wrong, and it’s only through knowing the future that Sam can help change the past,” he explained, gesturing back and forth as he spoke of time gone and time yet to come. “We have an advantage that you can’t ever have, and that’s not your fault.”

Nate hadn’t a way to argue with that. Honestly, he had a headache already, and he doubted all of it was confusion and time travel.

“Any chance I can get another drink?” he asked. “It’s a little dry in here,” he said as his hand went to his throat.

“Why do I think you don’t want a glass of water?” Al smirked, before the hand-link suddenly went crazy in his grasp. “Ah, duty calls,” he noted, as he hurried to the door. “I’ll ask Gooshie to get you that drink,” he told Nate on his way out, before leaving the mastermind alone with too many thoughts all over again.

* * *

Sam was just about to yell for Al one more time when the observer appeared through his usual invisible door.

“You called?” he asked with a smirk that his friend didn’t really appreciate.

“She’s gone again, Al,” he said with frustration, rushing over to the door and checking no-one was likely to come back to the bar any time soon. “Sophie and Hardison went upstairs to see if Parker was there...”

“She’s not,” confirmed Al, as he punched numbers into the hand-link. “She’s really gone again, straight out the door.”

“I know that now,” Sam replied frantically. “Eliot noticed the back door open and he’s gone to look around out there, see if he can find her, but I’ll bet he won’t since the team spent almost ten minutes arguing over whose fault it was Parker ran before anyone bothered to go after her!” he explained, waving his arms around like a crazed windmill.

“Hey, Sam, calm down,” Al advised. “You don’t want them to hear you,” he reminded him, gesturing for his friend to follow him around to the other side of the bar. “C’mere, fix yourself a scotch,” he advised.

“I don’t want a drink, Al,” said Sam with a sigh.

“It’s not for you, it’s for Nate,” his friend explained. “If you’re not helping look for Parker, they’re all gonna wonder why. Plus in times of crisis, this is what Nate does.”

Sam didn’t really want to start drinking in the middle of the afternoon, but he knew Al had a point. It would make him seem more believable as Nathan Ford if he had a scotch in his hand. On top of that, it would explain why he was still hanging around in the bar after all this time instead of going to help look for Parker. He was the only one here that knew all the searching was pointless. In the original history, she wasn’t found. In that time line she died, and the team all unravelled around her loss.

With a sigh, Sam walked over to the bar and in around it, searching for a bottle of scotch and a glass. He kept his voice low as he spoke to Al, just in case either Hardison and Sophie or Eliot returned whilst he was mid-question.

“So, how close are we to the original timeline?” he asked as he located the right bottle and poured a healthy measure.

“Er, you might wanna make that a double,” Al advised. “To sell the part.”

With a sigh Sam added more scotch to the glass, making gestures with his other hand for Al to get on with it already and tell him what he needed to know.

“Ah, let’s see,” he said, knocking the hand-link on the bar when it failed to co-operate properly. “Okay, so... we’re a few hours off,” he said with a smile that soon turned to a frown as he realised the signs were still not good, “but everything runs just the same,” he admitted. “If you don’t find this girl, Sam, she’s still going to die, just like before. Nothing’s really changed,” he shook his head.

“Damn it!” Sam complained, slamming his hand against the bar, then gulping down the double shot of whiskey without really even thinking about it, “but...” he coughed and choked some when the alcohol burned his throat, “but you can find her,” he squeaked out then, feeling sick. “You can get Ziggy to find Parker, make sure she’s okay?”

“But I can’t bring her back!” Al insisted. “She won’t see or hear me.”

“At least we’d know she’s safe for now, maybe even get some idea where to go looking to find her,” said Sam frustratedly, as he refilled the glass on the bar just as Nate might in such a crisis.

“Okay, good plan,” said the observer beside him, before looking skyward and yelling. “Ziggy, centre me on Parker!”

In a second he was gone, his conversation with Sam over just in time as the team all came rushing back through the door. They seemed completely unmoved by the fact Nate was behind the bar, gulping down scotch like it was going out of style. It was a little worrying to imagine what kind of man Nathan Ford really was if this was normal.

“Nate, she’s not hiding anywhere in the apartment, and she’s not on the roof,” said Sophie, all out of breath already from rushing around.

“I tried to get her by GPS amd comms, but no signal and no answer,” said Hardison sadly. “’Course that could be my technology all goin’ whack-a-doodle around here lately,” he worried.

“I checked all around the block,” Eliot shook his head. “No sign of which way she went.”

Sam was really starting to worry now and it showed on Nate’s face. Eliot was the best at what he did and if Parker was good enough to get away from him without a trace, then she was probably too good for them to ever find any traditional way. He had to hope that Al came through for him.

As if by pure force of will alone, the observer reappeared that very second next to Sam, who tried not to react in front of the others.

“Sam, we found Parker,” Al explained. “She’s about a mile away, running like she’s out to make her little legs fall off,” he told his friend, complete with two wiggling finger to signify the legs he spoke of. “She’s headed north, um... north west now. It’s not easy to keep track with her moving around so much.”

“Okay,” said Nate to his team, though Al stuck around in case he was needed. “Priority one is finding Parker and bringing her home, so Eliot, Hardison, you head for the south side of town, Sophie and I will take the north,” he explained. “Try all the places you think she might go to, and keep your eyes peeled on the street.”

The boys were soon gone, and Sam tried to concentrate even as Al and Sophie spoke over each other.

“They’re not gonna find her going south, Sam, I told you...” the observer was insisting.

“You really think we’re going to be able to catch the world’s most uncatchable thief?” asked Sophie with disbelief.

“No, not if she doesn’t want to be caught,” Sam answered the grifter first, “and even if we brought her back here, I’m not sure she’d stay right now,” he told her with a shake of his head, before downing another shot of whiskey and immediately wishing he hadn’t. “Something’s wrong, that much is clear, and until we figure out what it is and how to help Parker through it, she’s just going to keep running, and one of these days she’s not going to come back.”

“You have a plan, Sam?” said Al with a smile. “I knew you would,” he grinned, turning on a dime as he so often did.

“Wherever we’re going, you’re not driving,” said Sophie firmly as Sam contemplated a further scotch and decided against it - the world was already wavering before his eyes!

“We’re going to Parker’s place,” he told the grifter, replacing the bottle of scotch on the shelf. “See if she left us any clues as to what’s bothering her, and maybe where she’s gone.”

“It’s a long shot,” sighed Sophie, almost in complete union with Al.

Sam shook Nate’s head as he ushered her towards the door for them to leave.

“Right now, it’s all we have,” he told her, “but I’m sure wherever Parker is, somebody is watching over her, keeping her safe,” he said, looking back pointedly at Al.

The observer nodded that he got the message and disappeared in a flash.

* * *

Sam wasn’t sure what to think when Sophie pulled up the car outside a row of warehouses. He might have asked what they were doing in such a place, only he had mostly been concentrating on not throwing up from McRorys to here. Sophie really was not a competent driver and somebody should tell her so, though Sam was not convinced Nate should be the one, at least not until the real mastermind was inhabiting his body again.

“You look a little green,” said Sophie as she glanced his way, unfastening her seatbelt.

“I’m fine,” Sam forced out with a smile that was less than genuine.

Too many shots of whiskey and a rough drive combined, he was surprised he wasn’t every colour of the rainbow by now! Nevertheless he was here for a reason, and Parker would be much worse off than feeling nauseous if they didn’t figure out her problems before too long.

Sam was grateful for small mercies when Sophie punched the passcode into the keypad by the warehouse door. If he had been expected to know it then they really would have been in trouble! Moments later they were stood inside the vast warehouse that Parker apparently called home. Sam was genuinely astounded, though he tried not to show it. Nate must’ve been here before to see perfectly aligned cereal boxes and harnesses hung in tidy rows.

“I can’t believe she would leave for good without so many things,” sighed Sophie as she looked around. “Oh, but the bunny is gone,” she said worriedly.

“Bunny?” Sam echoed, turning around to look at her.

“You know, the stuffed bunny that Parker has? Like her security blanket, I suppose,” the grifter smiled sadly. “I hoped we’d see it here, that’d mean she meant to come back but... it’s gone.”

“Maybe it’s just in a different place?” Sam suggested, hoping to keep Sophie from worrying any more than was necessary as they searched high and low for the bunny, and any clue as to where Parker might have run to or why.

Sam had his own ideas as to the why at least. He was sure Parker was struggling with her feelings, either for Eliot or Hardison, possibly both. At the moment he had no proof, and guessed it was not the kind of thing Nate would usually notice, otherwise there would be no purpose to Sam being here. It would be better if they could find some evidence of what was wrong...

“Huh,” the little noise escaped Sophie’s throat and Sam turned to see what she had found.

“A book?” he checked as he realised what the grifter had pulled out from beneath the bed.

“Sort of,” she nodded. “It was meant to be like a journal. I bought it for Parker after... well, when you went to jail,” she admitted. “She was struggling to cope with another family potentially falling apart on her, but you know Parker, she doesn’t like to talk about things like that,” she rolled her eyes. “I bought her this, told her to write down anything that was bothering her...”

“And did she?” asked Sam, coming to stand by Sophie and look over her shoulder as she opened the book.

On some levels it seemed wrong, snooping into their little thief’s private thoughts, but at the same time, they knew it was all for the best. The ends justified the means, they had to know what was wrong if they were ever going to help Parker with her problems, if they were going to bring her home and keep her safe.

“There’s quite a bit in here from just recently,” said Sophie as she flipped through pages. “A lot of it’s rambling, I’m not sure...”

“Look,” said Sam, moving her hand and going back a couple of pages to something Sophie seemed to have missed.

There on the page was a list of names, Parker’s own beside Eliot and Hardison. Over and over she had written Parker + Eliot, Parker + Hardison, crossing one out and then the other. The next page had line on line of possible reasons why she might like one guy better than the other, and then the argument shifted. Most was under scribbles where she had clearly changed her mind.

“Wow!” gasped Sophie as she read on and on. “And we thought Parker didn’t have too many emotions,” she shook her head.

“She just keeps them hidden apparently,” Sam said thoughtfully as his eyes followed the grifter’s down the page.

From what he was reading here, it was almost as if Parker felt she should like Hardison because he evidently liked her, and as far more than a team-mate and friend. However, Parker was having a few feelings of her own in Eliot’s direction. She seemed utterly confused as to whether each of these guys were to be brother or lover to her. Having never been close to anyone until this team, Sam could see why she would feel the need to run. Choosing one guy over the other to date or similar could tear this team apart if not handled very carefully. This had to be what he was here to help Parker, Eliot, and Hardison figure out, Sam realised.

Other people’s emotional turmoil - he really never did get the easy jobs.


	7. Chapter 7

“How do you want to do this?” asked Sophie as she and Nate sat beside each other in her car.

They were still at Parker’s warehouse, neither sure where to head from here. Searching for the missing thief would be all well and good if they knew where to start, but they really didn’t. Sam could ask Al for his help like before, but even when they found Parker they had to figure out her problems or there was no use in bringing her home. That meant letting Eliot and Hardison in on the secret they now knew lived in Parker’s head and heart, and hoping they could all be grown up enough to deal with it. That was the part where Sam’s optimism failed him a little.

The way this team fought like kids when Parker first ran off, all accusations and tantrums, he held out little hope that he could get them to act reasonably over the little thief’s supposed feelings. Unfortunately, there was little to do but try and get them to see sense, to see that they had to take this well or lose the whole team dynamic forever.

“I mean, we could meet back at McRorys but... maybe it’d be better to do this over comms so the search doesn’t have to stop?” suggested Sophie, cutting into a train of thought that Sam had barely realised he was caught up in until that moment.

“Comms? Oh, right, yeah,” he muttered when he saw the grifter slide the bud into her ear, before starting up the car.

Sam patted all his pockets down, looking for his own earbud, and eventually came up with it, pushing it into Nate’s ear. Immediately he heard Eliot and Hardison bickering over directions and such - not a good start.

“Hey, guys?” he called to them, “Guys!”

“Nate? Did you find Parker?” asked Hardison immediately he realised there was a voice in his head again.

“No, we didn’t,” Sam confirmed, “but we might have an idea as to why she ran away.”

“We went by the warehouse,” Sophie continued for him, as she looked both ways down the road ahead and pulled out into the lack of traffic. “That diary I tried to convince Parker to keep a while back? Well, she’s been using it,” she told them.

“You read her diary?” said Eliot snippily, clearly thinking that was wrong. “Her personal, private diary?”

“Well, we had to do something!” Sophie argued. “It’s not like we were happy about it, but something’s clearly wrong, and in case you hadn’t noticed, Eliot, Parker isn’t much for sharing.”

“I think we all need to calm down a little bit here,” insisted Sam then. “The fact is, we read the diary, rightly or wrongly, and we’re pretty sure we know what has Parker so spooked,” he explained.

There was silence all over the comms then. The guys were waiting to hear the news, and Sam was trying to find a way to say this without making matters worse. Sophie glanced from the road to look at Nate expectantly, and clearing his throat, Sam finally found a voice.

“Um, Parker is... well, she struggling with feelings she’s having, or that she might be having,” he tried to explain, feeling hugely inept all of a sudden. “The fact is, guys, she likes you, both of you, but in different ways and, I guess, well, I guess she’s worried it’s going to effect the dynamic of the team.”

“Likes us?” echoed Hardison. “You wanna elaborate on that?” he checked, his tone unreadable over the comms, but Eliot knew what he was getting at because he could see his friend’s face.

It bothered the hitter that the guy he saw as a brother might get his heart broken in this, but at the same time he dreaded hearing the truth about Parker’s feelings for his own reasons. She was special, no doubt, and he loved her completely, though he never let himself wonder too much on what form that love took. For Hardison, it was all out romantic attraction he was feeling, and Eliot had long suspected Parker had no interest in that kind of relationship with anybody at all. Maybe he was wrong, but it seemed they didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“I think, maybe, Parker is aware of your feelings towards her, Hardison, and she’s not so sure she can return them,” said Sam carefully, though Eliot knew no kind of letting down gently was going to stop a knife going through Hardison’s heart right about now.

It was bad enough for him to hear that Parker couldn’t love him the way he wanted. It was worse knowing she ran away because of it, and could very well be in danger.

“Alright,” the hacker nodded, though neither Nate nor Sophie could see, and Eliot kept his eyes straight ahead on the road. “Alright, so, we find her and I tell her it’s cool. I mean, hell, if she don’t... if she don’t feel that way, I can’t change it, and I don’t want her to feel bad. Crazy woman gotta know I wouldn’t ever let that mess up what we got as friends, as a team and all.”

“I’m not so sure she does know that,” said Sophie with a sigh. “You have to remember, she’s not as emotionally stable as the rest of us. Relationships are all new to her, be they romantic or friendships or whatever. I think she’s just really confused right now.”

“And it’s not just about you, Hardison,” Nate cut in, making Eliot start. “It may be that Parker has feelings in Eliot’s direction that she’s also struggling with.”

The phrase ‘if looks could kill’ went through the hitter’s mind then as he glanced towards Hardison the same moment the hacker looked daggers at him. Yeah, the only thing that was going to hurt him more than Parker not wanting him that way, was wanting Eliot instead.

It wasn’t as if he encouraged her or anything. The Southern gentleman thing was no facade, that was just the hitter’s way with women, and he had always been nothing but friends with Parker or Sophie. Trouble is, where the little thief was concerned, his mind had been known to wander even if his hands never did. He thought about her in that way sometimes, he couldn’t help it. She was attractive, and sweet, and at the same time one of the strongest women he ever met in his life, both physically and moreover inside where it truly counted. He loved her, and he didn’t mind admitting it, but it was no brotherly affection he was feeling these days, he knew that, in those odd moments when he allowed himself to think on it long enough.

“Hardison...” he began, not really knowing what he was going to follow up with anyway when the hacker cut him off.

“We gotta find Parker,” he said flatly. “Nate, we gonna carry on covering the south side, work our way back up to McRorys when we done.”

“We’re still working on the north,” replied Sophie, with just a hint of sympathy edging her tone. “Hopefully we’ll have our girl back before we meet up again.”

She phrased it so well, Sam thought. Our girl. Parker was special to all of them, and though he was sure it would be difficult yet to have the three younger members of the team work out their love triangle, the important point was to bring their lost sheep back into the fold. They were a team, a family, first and foremost, and the thought of it caused a smile on Nate’s lips, in spite of the serious situation.

“Hey, Sam,” said a voice so suddenly, it caused him to jump, so much that Sophie looked over with surprise.

“Involuntary spasm,” said Sam with a tight smile. “You know how it is.”

“Not really,” Sophie frowned, but said no more about it as she took the next left and kept a good look out for anyone female, blonde, and running at top speed in the other direction!

“I’ve been keeping tabs on Parker,” said Al from his place hovering in the back seat. “You’re practically right on top of her, Sam.”

That made Nate’s face light up in a smile, though he repressed it the moment he realised his happy expression. It wouldn’t do for him to look so pleased when they hadn’t actually found Parker yet.

“I wonder if we should go left or right at this next junction?” he asked aloud, and though Sophie replied with her thoughts, Sam was only listening to Al’s answer.

“Er, left... No, yeah, definitely left,” he decided. “Down two blocks, then a right and she’s at this building, it’s... the Whigfield, no, wait a second... the Wakefield building?” he said uncertainly, smacking he hand-link he held every few seconds in an attempt to get it to play ball.

Sam nodded along as he made suggestions to Sophie about which way to drive. She was clearly baffled by his sudden insight, eyes wide as saucers when Nate asked her to pull over outside a tall building that she recognised all too well.

“This place?” she checked. “Why do you think Parker would be here?”

“I, er... it’s just a hunch,” Sam shrugged Nate’s shoulders as he climbed out of the car, and Al faded through the back door to stand beside him. “Which floor?” he whispered sideways to the observer, well out of ear-shot of Sophie as she stepped elegantly onto the pavement on the other side of the car.

“Er, no floor, Sam,” Al shook his head, pointing upwards.

The physicist felt a little sick when he truly realised what his friend meant

* * *

“You sure we don’t got interference on these things?” complained Eliot as he pulled out his earbud and glanced at it. “I swear, I keep hearin’ another voice. Its quiet, but I can hear it.”

“No,” said Hardison shortly. “’S prob’ly your imagination.”

Eliot hated this. He hated that his friend would hardly look at him, never mind talk to him. This whole thing with Parker, it wasn’t really anybody’s fault, not hers or either of theirs, and he didn’t see why he should be taking crap for it. Sure, he had some sympathy for his bro’s broken heart, but that only went so far. Ten minutes in, the almost-silent treatment was already getting old.

“Hardison, you gotta snap outta this,” said the hitter as gently as he could, but it didn’t come easy. “I know it’s kinda rough on you, knowin’ maybe Parker doesn’t like you the way you wanted...”

“Oh, it’s kinda rough?” Hardison echoed from the passenger side. “You take the girl o’ my dreams away from me and it’s kinda rough?”

“That’s bull, man, and you know it!” the hitter yelled then, fighting to keep his attention on the road ahead when all he wanted to do was give the hacker a dressing down. “What are you, like twelve years old? We’re all adults, Hardison, including Parker. She has a mind and a heart of her own. I don’t control what she feels!” he declared loudly.

“That ain’t even the point!” the hacker yelled back, though he wasn’t sure he could explain and therefore didn’t even try.

Eliot bit his lip to keep from exploding as he yanked the steering wheel hard and swung the truck over to the kerb, pulling up sharply. Hardison would’ve hit his head on the dash if he hadn’t been properly strapped in, and came close anyway.

“Now you listen to me, and you listen good,” Eliot told him firmly. “If you don’t get over this, then Parker won’t come back and we’ll all lose her, you hear me?” he said angrily. “I’m willin’ to admit, I don’t hate that she likes me, okay? But I never encouraged her, man, never,” he swore.

Hardison didn’t want to even look at the hitter right now, but he hardly had a choice in the close confines of the car, with Eliot yelling the way he was. If nothing else, he saw truth in his friend’s eyes. He knew it anyway, he knew his bro never moved in on the girl he liked. Nothing had actually happened, not at all. He still wanted to be mad that he, the geek, had potentially lost another really cool girl to the stereotypical hot dude, but Eliot had a real point here. If anything else was true, their fighting and Hardison getting mad was only going to make Parker want to run away all the more. That was no good to anyone.

“Guys?” Nate’s voice suddenly came through the comms that neither man had really remembered they left in before. “Guys, if you’re done tearing holes in each other, we think we found Parker,” he told them. “I’m pretty sure I can convince her to come home, but I’m gonna need your help...”

* * *

Sam wasn’t feeling so great right now. The roof of a fifty-storey building on a fairly windy day was not his favourite place to be. Add to that he was about to try and talk an emotionally unstable woman down off the top of said building and, yeah, really not his greatest day ever.

To her credit, Parker didn’t look ready to jump, at least not in a suicidal way. She was sat on the edge of the roof with her legs dangling, but she was wearing her harness. Any leaping she did today would be for fun and not to her death, but Sam still needed to talk to her. He needed for her to come home and settle things with her friends that were practically family. It wasn’t just that he must complete the mission to leap out either, he really didn’t like to think of such a sweet girl feeling so sad and confused. For a thief, she really did seem to be a truly good person. She just needed a shoulder, someone to talk to maybe, and Sam figured that must be just exactly what he was here for.

Al stood guard by the door, just in case anybody came up. He would be an early warning system for Sam, should it be discovered by security that Sophie was not legitimate. She was a pretty good actress, Sam thought, keeping the Receptionist busy and the security men occupied whilst he made for the elevator and then the stairs and ladder that brought him right up here to the roof.

“It’s rude to stare,” said Parker, so suddenly that Sam almost physically jumped.

“It’s not exactly polite to run out on people without an explanation,” he countered with an amiable smile as he walked over.

Sitting down beside her seemed like the thing to do, but on the edge of a roof this far up into the air, that seemed suicidal.

“Do you...? Er, do you think maybe we could come back from the edge just a little?” he asked shakily, telling himself not to ever look down.

Parker frowned some but then nodded her head and moved away from the brink. She sat down again, cross-legged a few feet further into safety, and Sam sat down opposite in similar style, without even thinking about it.

“How did you know I was here?” asked Parker curiously, hugging a soft toy bunny in her lap still, clearly the one Sophie had mentioned back at the warehouse. “Did you guys put a tracker on me again?” she checked.

“No, not exactly,” said Sam, eyes lifting briefly to Al stood by the roof access door. “I guess I’ve just gotten to know you well enough now,” he smiled.

Parker looked oddly at him a moment but then seem to accept his explanation. Still, she didn’t look exactly cheerful, and proved her bad mood when she snapped at him a moment later.

“I’m not coming back,” she said definitely. “It’s not going to work anymore, I can’t,” she told him, and though she tried for angry and defiant, Sam saw a terrible pain in the depths of her wide blue eyes.

It hurt Parker so much even to contemplate the idea of leaving her beloved team, but she felt she had no choice. Sam had to let her know she did have options, and that nobody was going to make her feel bad anymore, intentionally or otherwise. This was what he was here to do, he was sure of it now. He had to make this emotional connection that dear old drunken Nate probably never would have managed, and he had to do it now.

“Honey, y’know, emotions... they’re tough to handle sometimes,” he tried to tell her. “Sometimes people try to struggle alone with their feelings, but y’know if you just talk to somebody else and let them help you, it can make things seem a whole lot clearer.”

Parker looked a little bewildered, and Sam couldn’t blame her. He doubted she had ever heard Nate talk this way before. From what Al said, the guy was a little emotionally stunted and no-one could really blame him, given what his life had been - the loss of his son, the break up of his marriage, the time in jail. The guy had it rough and spent most of his time trying to deal with his own emotional baggage, largely by self-medicating with scotch, it seemed. Parker needed help that he couldn’t give, that was why Sam was here. All the parts he played, the roles he had to take on, he understood better than most how mixed up people could get over love, be it familial, friendship, or romantic. He’d seen it all, a hundred times over, and though he couldn’t tell Parker exactly that, he could use his experience to help her.

“It’s already clear,” the little thief sighed heavily.“It’s too clear that Hardison likes me. Likes me like Sophie likes you,” she said, almost losing herself with her over-use of the word ‘like’ but carrying on regardless after a moments pause. “It’s clear Eliot doesn’t. The only person who’s not clear is me,” she sighed, blowing her bangs off her forehead and looking away.

She was like a little kid in a lot of ways, and reminded Sam of several he had met over all his years of leaping. She was adorable and innocent somehow, going through the trials and tribulations of the heart and love triangles that most people learnt to handle in their teenage years. Parker didn’t have a normal upbringing, she was only now finding herself in this sticky situation, and she saw no way out but to bolt before anything got too serious.

“Sometimes feelings aren’t easy to define,” said Sam knowingly, “and sometimes we let our feelings be swayed by others,” he explained, getting Parker’s attention easily with his words of wisdom. “I have an idea, think about this,” he told her then. “Imagine that Hardison doesn’t have these feelings for you anymore, that he’s just a friend or a brother to you.”

“Okay,” said Parker uncertainly, though she did it all the same. “Now what?”

“Now, with that in mind, how do you feel about Eliot?” he asked her gently.

“I don’t... I mean...” the blonde stumbled over what she thought she should say and what she really felt before finally pushing out her real feelings in a burst of quickly spoken words. “He’s hot and sweet and I really wanna make out with him.”

That wasn’t exactly what Sam was expecting, especially practically yelled in his face like an angry tirade, but it was okay. Finally, they were getting somewhere.

“Okay then,” he nodded once. “Now, look at things another way,” he tried. “Imagine that Eliot wasn’t around, that he was never part of our team,” he suggested. “Would you want to be closer with Hardison then? Would you want to date him?”

Parker looked incredibly thoughtful, several different unnameable emotions playing across her face, before she finally frowned and answered.

“No,” she admitted. “Even before I felt this way about Eliot, I never... I never really wanted Hardison that way. I just, I don’t feel it,” she said, close to tears, Sam was sure of it.

He felt bad for her, he really did. He had heard in the tone of the hacker’s voice over the comm how tough it was for him to realise he stood no chance with the supposed girl of his dreams. It would be a strain on the relationship between Hardison and Eliot if things developed between the hitter and Parker, but Sam had to hope they could all overcome this. Surely, he would not be here, trying to help put this team back together, if they were beyond hope?

“You did well, Parker,” said Sam, reaching out a hand to pat her shoulder comfortingly. “You told the truth, and that’s the first step to figuring this whole thing out.”

“It’s fine telling you,” she sniffled, “but if I tell Hardison and Eliot...”

“You just did, mama,” said a voice, and the thief was visibly startled as she realised Nate hadn’t only been comforting her with his movement, he was slipping an earbud into her ear, and she could now hear Hardison loud and clear over the comms. The thought occurred that everything she said must’ve been broadcasting through Nate’s own comm to the guys, wherever they were. It was like a nightmare, and her first instinct was to run or take a dive off this roof, only she didn’t.

“Parker, darlin’, please don’t bolt again,” said Eliot in her ear.

It was amazing to her that he seemed to know just exactly what she was going to do before she ever did it. He wasn’t even here, couldn’t see her at all, it was incredible. It was probably one of the reasons she liked him more than she could ever like anyone else.

“Seriously, Parker,” the hacker carried on where his friend left off. “We’re not mad or whatever, we just... we just want you to come home so we can figure this whole thing out.”

It was all a little overwhelming, but in a much better way than she thought. Parker had assumed Hardison would be angry at her, upset maybe. She thought Elliot might laugh at her or just tell her she was crazy. She had run away because it seemed easier than facing the consequences of her confession, and yet, now she had made it and everyone still wanted her around. The guys seemed so worried she would leave them again. Nate was smiling kindly across at her. She was still wanted, still loved.

“Let’s go home,” she smiled herself then as she unhooked her line and got to her feet.

Parker barely even flinched when Nate’s arm slipped around her shoulders and urged her towards the roof access door.

Sam waited for her to go through and start heading down before he allowed himself to pay attention to Al.

“That was good work, Sam,” his friend told him with a smile and a happy tear in his eye.

“Thanks...” he began, stopping abruptly when the observer gestured wildly by the side of his head, prompting Sam to pull the earbud from Nate’s ear. “Thanks, but if everything is fixed here, why didn’t I leap yet?” he hissed, glancing down to make sure Parker hadn’t heard him.

“Er, well, I don’t know...” Al admitted, as he pushed buttons on his hand-link and checked the screen again. “I mean, everything looks fine here, no missing persons or mysterious deaths, everybody happy as clams for a long time yet,” he confirmed. “Maybe there’s some unfinished business you have to deal with back at the apartment?” he shrugged.

Sam shook his head, not really sure what else there could be to do. Still, he didn’t have time to stand here talking about it. He had to follow Parker, pick up Sophie, and get these people back where they belonged, all together above McRorys pub, as the team and family they were meant to be, at last.


	8. Chapter 8

The atmosphere was odd at best as the team gathered in Nate’s apartment above McRory’s pub. It was always going to be awkward, they all knew that, given the confession Parker had made and how it affected both Hardison and Eliot. Still, they were all determined that nothing was allowed to upset their little thief again. Everyone wanted her to be comfortable, to want to stay with them. Hardison knew that if he couldn’t be with Parker romantically, he at least needed her close, as a friend or something. She was too special to let go completely. If that meant having to face the sight of her and Eliot holding hands and making goo-goo eyes somewhere along the line, well, he’d just jump off that bridge when he came to it. For now, he bit his lip, forced a smile, and gave Parker the hugging of her life.

“Seriously, mama, do not make us go through that again,” the hacker insisted. “I swear, I aged like ten years with the stress of not knowing where you was.”

“I’m sorry,” she said guiltily, and nobody was in any doubt that she was apologising for much more than just bolting on her team.

“It’s okay,” her friend shrugged bravely. “’S all good”

“I swear you just go outta your way to prove me right about being twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag,” Eliot teased her then as she turned to look his way, the smirk on his lips proving he meant no harm.

“It’s not hard to prove,” she shrugged, finding a smile herself when he looked at her that way.

She was more sure now than ever about how she felt about him, and he wasn’t yelling at her or being mean about it, so that had to be a good sign. For now it seemed like the right thing to do was to let it go, to not talk about it for a while. Honestly, it was just embarrassing having everyone stare at her and make such a big deal.

“No more fuss around me, please,” she urged them then, waving her hands as if to shoo them all away. “Seriously, my claustrophobia is gonna come back!” she told them, semi-seriously they realised then.

Sam couldn’t stop smiling as he turned away with the others. Hardison retreated to his desk and computer, Eliot made a dive over the back of the couch, landing squarely in the middle with plans to watch sports. Sam noticed Sophie gravitating towards Nate as he stood a moment watching Parker still, rifling through the kitchen cupboards in search of her favourite cereal. For a bunch of misguided thieves, they were kind of a great little family.

It did make him wonder how and why he was still here, until Sophie was suddenly at his side with a smile that he somehow knew meant business.

“I think you and I need to talk, Mr Mastermind,” she told him in a low voice, taking a hold of his hand.

“Oh boy,” muttered Sam as he allowed himself to be led away - it didn’t seem as if he was getting much of a choice in the matter.

* * *

“How are we doing in here, Nathan?” asked Al as he breezed into the waiting room to visit with his latest ‘guest’.

“Better,” he admitted, as he toasted the observer with an empty glass, “and getting better all the time,” he said, as he reached for the bottle on the table to fill up the tumbler again.

“Er, maybe not the best idea,” said Al, diplomatic as possible as he eased the bottle from Nate’s grasp and moved it far away. “See, I don’t think you’re going to be here very much longer,” he advised.

The Mastermind wasn’t sure he liked having his booze taken from him after only two shots, but if he was going back to where he came from soon, maybe it was for the best. Sophie would only complain if he was drunk again, and that wasn’t the only thing that came to mind.

“I guess if I... pop back in...” he said uncertainly, with a random hand gesture.

“Er, we usually say leap in,” suggested Al, leaning back against the table.

“Okay, when I leap back in,” Nate amended. “I become me again, and I’m guessing right now, he... me... I won’t be drunk, so if I go back in that state, people will notice.”

“That could be a valid point.” Al nodded along, putting a cigar in his mouth and lighting it, “but I wouldn’t worry too much. Once you get back there, from what we understand, there’s a mild moment of disorientation and then you’ll be just fine,” he explained with a smile. “Probably won’t remember this place or me at all.”

Nate wasn’t so sure about that. He wasn’t so certain he was ever going to forget being pulled out of his life and thrown back in, both at a moments notice. He’d had a lot of thinking time since he’d been here, about what exactly had happened, but also about his life as it stood now. He thought about Sophie and what it would be like to never see her again. It was those kind of thoughts that had him begging for the bottle which was now too far away on the table.

“So, your friend, Doctor Hackett...” he began, only to be interrupted again.

“Er, Dr Beckett,” Al corrected him. “Sam Beckett.”

“Yeah, well, he’s fixed whatever needs fixing, huh?” he checked. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be ‘leaping’,” he air-quoted, with a look that said he still wasn’t overly impressed by this whole situation, and Al really couldn’t really blame him.

“More or less fixed, yeah,” he agreed, puffing out smoke from his cigar. “Just tying up loose ends now.”

“You’re not going to tell me what he could fix that I couldn’t, are you?” he smiled slightly, already sure he was right.

“You’re a smart man, Mr Ford.” Al smirked back at him, the only answer Nate was going to get out of him and they both knew it. “But, y’know, if it’s any comfort, your team have been thinking something was a little off about you,” he admitted, even though he shouldn’t really be saying anything.

“That’s... that’s nice to hear, I guess,” Nate admitted, “but I... woah!”

He stopped short of saying anything else, hands braced on his knees, head bowed to the floor. Al pushed off the table and moved to crouch in front of Nate, a little worried by the sudden turn of events.

“You okay there?” he checked, as the mastermind’s eyes came up to meet his own.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just feel a little odd. Maybe you should’ve let me have that other drink,” he half-joked.

Al shook his head and got up, stepping clear of Nate as he spoke.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he confirmed. “Hold on tight, Mr Ford. I think you’re about to make that leap.”

Nate nodded that he agreed, though he wasn’t sure how he could possibly know. Standing up shakily from the chair, he smiled genuinely at this man who had kept him company and maybe even kept him sane these last two days.

“Been nice knowing you, Al,” he said with a nod.

“You too, Nathan,” the observer replied, offering a kind of salute type of wave, as Nathan Ford leapt out, and the next visitor to Quantum Leap HQ leapt in.

* * *

“You know, you really impressed me today,” said Sophie as she and Nate turned to each other in the privacy of the next room. “The way you spoke to Parker, fixed everything...”

“That was nothing,” insisted Sam with a shake of his head. “Anybody would have done the same thing,” he told her, hoping more than believing that Nathan Ford would have done it all himself.

The problem was, Sam was pretty sure he wouldn’t be here if Nate could have handled the problem just fine. Of course, the fact he hadn’t leapt yet might just mean that this, here and now with Sophie, was the point after all.

“It made me think, about you and me,” the grifter said, her eyes dipping to the floor as she stood before him now. “The way you told Parker she should be honest, no matter the cost. It made me wonder why we can’t just do that, and stop all this dancing around each other.”

Sam was sure by now that he was right in his assumption. It was clear now, more than ever, that Sophie was in love with him, with Nate, and it made sense for him to be in love with her too. There was nothing not to love. She was beautiful and intelligent, elegant and sexy, smart and caring. Sam couldn’t find a thing about her that would make him not want to be with her, except for maybe that she was a career criminal, but then that suited Nate just fine.

“Sophie,” he said softly, putting a hand to her face and encouraging her to look at him. “You must know how I feel about you.”

“I think I do,” she replied, leaning into his touch, “but then you never tell me or show me, so how can I be sure?” she asked in earnest.

It came naturally to Sam to just lean in then and kiss her. He never even really thought about it, and yet the moment their lips met in a kiss of love, much like a fairytale, it broke the spell. The familiar feeling of the leap came upon him, and then Dr Sam Beckett was gone, leaving Nathan Ford back in the place where he ought to be.

Moments later when they parted, it took Nate a moment to get his bearings, partly because he just returned to a life he had been pulled out of two days before, but also because the kiss he just shared with Sophie made his head swim.

“Wow,” she reacted with a little surprise. “That was quite a kiss,” she smiled, trying to catch her breath.

“You’re not kidding,” replied Nate, a little stunned by the turn of events in all kinds of ways.

For a man that spent so much time drinking or immersing himself in cons just to ignore his own life, he never thought he would be this glad to be back in it. Being away from his friends and his job was bad enough, but being away from Sophie, that was what had hurt the most. She wasn’t there to tell him how to be, how to act, how to be Nathan Ford. Now he was back, she was in his arms, and he had a chance to keep her there - now or never.

“Sophie, I... I love you,” he told her, honestly and truthfully as he ever said anything in his life.

There were tears in her eyes and no words she could find to speak as she pushed herself closer and kissed him again, long and hard, proving with everything she had that it was all she needed or wanted to hear, and that she felt just exactly the same.

* * *

Sam felt the usual feeling of being at odds with his own mind and body when he landed in his next location and persona. He was alone, which was usually a bonus on the leap in, but he still had no idea of even where he was, nevermind who he was. This was an office, that much was clear, despite the fact the windows behind and to the side of him had stained glass. He was sat behind a desk, complete with phone and paperwork, and such. Now he just had to hope that phone didn’t ring before he figured out who was supposed to answer it!

Getting up from the chair, he wandered around to the filing cabinet, but just when he reached for the drawer to open it, he heard footsteps behind him.

“Sweetheart, did you follow up on the Montoya case like I asked you to?” said the man leaning out of the adjoining door as Sam turned around to face him.

“Montoya case?” Sam echoed, feeling more than a little disorientated, especially since the guy in front of him just called him sweetheart!

“Yeah, we talked about it this morning,” the balding man continued, though Sam barely heard as his eyes drifted to the glass of the door being held open.

There was a symbol on it, a triangle with a eye above, and words beneath.

“Mars Investigations,” he muttered, until the bald guy from before came closer and clicked his fingers in Sam’s face.

“Hey, Veronica, you sure you’re okay?” he checked, and the physicist glanced away, right into a mirror on the opposite wall.

A short, petite blonde girl stared back at him.

“Oh boy!”


End file.
